


Waiting for the Bus

by tend



Category: Yuugiou
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:06:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tend/pseuds/tend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prison, Rintama High, America.  Three places Jounouchi never went in his life.  Or one life, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Anybody who gets both ZZ Top references _and_ the Fiona Apple one also gets a cookie. READY STEADY GO. (you don't have to recognize that one.)

"-Jounouchi, Katsuya.-"

The guy mispronounced his name, mangling all the vowels obscenely. Jounouchi stood up anyway. His legs were stiff and cold from hours sitting motionless on his bunk, his fingers freezing, but none of this showed through as he moved; he'd had more than enough time by now to get used to masking whatever discomfort he might be feeling. Wouldn't have made it very long if he hadn't.

Jounouchi had gotten better at a lot of things designed to keep his ass out of trouble these last few years. Or thought he had, at least.

The guard was short and a bit fat, all soft edges over substantial muscle; the kind of guy you could only really get on the head in a close situation. He stared inscrutably at Jounouchi for a few seconds, sniffed once, so loudly that it echoed around the concrete walls, then nodded and unlocked the cell door, sliding it open for the blond.

"-Ready to get out, I bet,-" he remarked as they walked, leading while Jounouchi followed. Their feet were moving almost in time, the twin sound of boots thudding on metal grating.

"-No, sir,-" Jounouchi replied promptly, working his teeth around the accent he still had trouble covering. Four years in America and he still hadn't quite worked out the trick of it, for all his effort. "-Easier to get food here.-"

"-Funny guy.-" The guard said it like this didn't quite meet his approval, which in Jounouchi's experience was usually the case. Prison staff didn't like dealing with funny prisoners. He tried not to be one specifically because of this--but hell, he was getting out. He could crack a joke or two.

"-No, sir,-" he said again, feeling his chest abruptly expand as it really settled in: _yes_, he was getting out. He was getting out, and nothing was going to put him back in again, goddamnit. "-Not really. I had three months to think that.-"

-

He could have gotten a bus pretty much anywhere on his release, so long as that anywhere matched one of the numbers on a highly specific route. There was enough cash back in his pocket now to go wherever he wanted independently, of course, but the prison itself would have done it for him for free if he'd just asked, and he wasn't a picky guy. He could rock any number on a map given enough time.

Only Jounouchi wasn't looking to move around again just yet. Portland was as good as anything else, and he didn't have much to get back to on the outside besides his old job at one of the sushi bars near Chinatown. The owner was a friend of his, and he'd already visited a couple times these last few weeks to assure Jounouchi that he'd have work for as long as he needed after his release.

Jounouchi bit his lip on a grin, yanking the sweater he hadn't worn in exactly three months over his head to hide it completely. The front penitentiary gate was finally behind him, shutting as he stood out in the cold and breathed the mid-autumn air; sharp breaths that manifested in sad grey clouds, each fading as soon as it appeared. It wasn't even evening yet, but already it was uncomfortably chilly, the frost early this year. It had been midsummer when he'd gone in.

Good thing he'd been wearing a sweater the day they picked him up.

Rounding his lips on a threadbare whistle, Jounouchi stuffed his hands into his pockets and made his way down the street, trying to shake off the strangeness of losing an entire season of his life so unexpectedly. He didn't doubt it would take a while to get over it. He supposed it was oddly fortunate, then, that all he had in the whole world right now was time.

-

He hit a grocery store first, where he counted out his money inside one of the men's bathroom stalls and determined that he had eighty seven dollars and two dimes to last the next few days. He'd be able to start up again at his friend's bar tomorrow, but pay only got dished out Sunday mornings, and it wasn't even Monday night yet.

So he'd have to make things stretch a little. No problem. Jounouchi was good at that. It was kind of a pain in the ass that they'd let him out a day earlier than expected, but Samura--that was his friend--didn't sleep much. Hopefully he wouldn't care when Jounouchi showed up tonight instead. (Samura lived in the room directly above his bar, which was where Jounouchi was going to be staying until he could find a new place. The guy'd even been nice enough to get what few possessions Jounouchi had out of his apartment before the lease had lapsed, so those were waiting for him too.)

Stepping out of the stall, Jounouchi went over to the mirror and inspected himself.

To the uninformed he figured he wouldn't look much different from any guy walking down the street: too-big sweater over a T-shirt, carpenter jeans, boots, wallet on a chain. His hair was a bit longer than he usually kept it, but he sure as hell didn't look like he'd just gotten out of jail, even to himself.

It was fucking surreal.

Sighing, Jounouchi smacked the tap and leaned down to wash his face--but it was an older water-saving faucet model, so he kept having to hit it, and the water never got past lukewarm. He thought about washing with soap for good measure, but when he pressed the dispenser nothing came out.

The paper towels when he got to them were reprocessed brown, rough and barely absorbent. Each one stunk as he scrubbed it over his face, so strong that the smell lingered on his skin, under his nose, moving with him even as he left the bathroom for the store proper, his shoes squeaking on the tiles.

Back in the store, moving under a bizarre host of Halloween decorations (it was only six days away, he realized with a jolt), including a fake spider which dropped alarmingly into his hair, he bought a day-old baguette from the sales rack and a package of sliced turkey, which he immediately took outside to eat, sitting on the closest public bench he could find in the weak sunlight and people-watching for the first time in months.

At first he mixed the food up, but after a few minutes turned his attention to decimating the bread alone, then slowed down to enjoy each turkey slice, rolling them into little flutes and chewing methodically from one end to the other.

He was on the last one when a lady passed, walking a husky who was within seconds totally absorbed by his hand. Grinning, Jounouchi tossed the slice to the dog, and watched as it was snapped out of the air with perfect precision.

"-Eat up, buddy,-" he laughed, wiping his hands down on his pants.

"-_Hey_,-" the lady said loudly, startling him.

Jounouchi looked up and found her glaring, her free hand balled into a fist. "-_Hey_,-" she said again, "-you shouldn't just _do_ that. He's in training right now.-"

"-Oh,-" Jounouchi said lamely, embarrassed. "-Sorry.-"

"-You can't let a dog get used to begging, particularly from strangers,-" she went on, as though he hadn't apologized at all. "-I mean, d'you have any idea how important it is that he get consistent training? I---"

"-Okay, okay,-" Jounouchi interrupted defensively, getting up off the bench and moving a few steps in the opposite direction, blushing. "-Got it. I just--was just sharing.-"

She continued to glare, but didn't say anything else, apparently realizing that he'd gotten the message. After a few seconds more she turned and began to walk again, looking vaguely embarrassed now by her behavior, if unwilling to say anything by way of apology. The dog, however, stared back for as long as he was in sight, tail wagging, clear blue eyes wide and alert.

"-Bye, buddy,-" Jounouchi said quietly, waving one hand after him, and watched until he was gone.

-

It was around eight o'clock, after several hours spent wandering without direction through the city, just for the sake of being outside, that Jounouchi at last found himself getting close to Chinatown. His first thought upon noticing this was to go to Samura's now, even though it was a bit earlier than he'd intended, but just before he got over the Willamette he passed another bar he was familiar with (not a sushi place, but an actual gaijin dive), and decided to stop in and say hello to the owner before he tracked Samura down.

Jounouchi wasn't much of a bar-goer, but this place actually sold decent sake thanks to its proximity to the Asian markets, and the owner was a good enough guy. White, as was most of the clientele, but that was fine. Jounouchi had met a lot of white people he actually liked since coming to the States, which had been something of a surprise at first. He hadn't quite realized how stereotyped his thinking had been before his arrival. Not that the people here didn't have their own really bizarre stereotypes for him. Fair, as they liked to say, was only fair.

The place when he stepped in was maybe half full, testament to the hour, though all the bar seats were taken except one. Jounouchi ended up going for that, wanting to talk to the bartender, not a waitress.

It was a nice enough establishment, smoke-free except for a little section in the back, and clean within limits. A fake black cat, hissing, frozen in the act of arching its back, sat at the end of the bar farthest from him, its eyes directed toward the door, where it could watch the people as they came in. The end of _Sharp Dressed Man_ was playing on the jukebox (currently wearing a witch's hat), tinny, but still instantly recognizable.

A patch of the bar was slightly sticky against his sleeve when he leaned an elbow on it, but he'd almost been expecting that. Wouldn't've been a full day if he hadn't managed to get something on his shirt.

Fortunately the bartender tonight was the guy he recognized (there were two of them), though he couldn't quite remember his name. "-Hey,-" said Jounouchi once he'd been noticed. "-Tom here?-"

"-Sure is,-" the bartender said. "-Want something to drink while I grab him?-"

"-Ah,-" Jounouchi hesitated, frowning. Normally he wouldn't, wasn't really a fan of drinking without reason, particularly when he couldn't really afford it--but what the hell. Tonight was special. And besides, he was _freezing_. "-Sure. Hot sake.-"

"-Middle grade okay?-"

Jounouchi grinned teasingly at him, unable to let that one go. "-You mean honjozo-shu?-"

The bartender laughed, taking it in stride. "-Yeah, that. Lemme grab it for you.-"

"-Thanks,-" Jounouchi murmured, peeling his sleeve off the bar and inspecting it critically as the man went away. The last chords of _Sharp Dressed Man_ faded and were replaced by _Dancing in the Dark_. He couldn't help rolling his eyes a little at that; seemed like this damn song played in every bar on the West coast.

"You're Japanese."

Startled, Jounouchi looked up, his right arm still hiked up next to his chin for examination.

It was the guy on the stool to his right who'd spoken. He was maybe Jounouchi's age, maybe a little older, but either way, definitely not thirty just yet; brunet, blue-eyed, clean shaven, handsome of a type, and _freakishly_ tall, with over half a foot on Jounouchi, even sitting. Nicely dressed. Too nice for a regular at this place, so probably a businessman on a special trip. Celebrating something, perhaps, or lamenting something else. He was drinking what looked like brandy, but might just as easily have been a dark whiskey. Jounouchi wasn't exactly an expert.

"So're you," he replied at last, frowning. It felt nice to speak normally again after so many months of not being able to, but he had no idea who the hell this guy was. "How'd you guess? I mean--" He pointed here at his hair, illustrative. Most everybody got thrown off by it.

Oddly, the man had remained completely expressionless since Jounouchi first looked at him, and continued to stay so even as he responded: "I have yet to hear a Westerner actually say sake correctly, let alone name one of the grades."

"Oh," said Jounouchi, bemused. Absently he returned his arm to the bar. "Well. Lucky us. You just move here or something?"

"No," the stranger said flatly, taking a precise sip of his drink, which had sweated a series of rough, interlocking rings into his coaster. "Business."

Well, score one for Jounouchi. Trying not to grin, the blond glanced away, and found the bartender returning with his tokkuri and choko. "-Suge!-" he said, watching as they were set down. "-Thank you.-"

"-Sure thing. One of the girls should be getting Tom right now.-"

Jounouchi picked up the little ceramic flask by the neck with his fingertips and poured, watching tiny wisps of steam peel away from the surface of the traditional cup with a smile. "-Great.-"

The bartender retreated. Jounouchi took a deep breath and knocked back the first cup, shuddering as it went down.

"Is that any good?"

Surprised to be addressed a second time by the taciturn businessman, Jounouchi eyed him curiously, keeping half an eye on his cup as he poured again. "'S okay. They've got junmai too if you like that shit better. I never had it, though; kinda pricey for me. Why?" He grinned before he could stifle the urge, leaning in toward the stranger a little, feeling more like himself in this second than he had in three months: "Bad day or something?"

The stranger turned straight again, draining his glass without so much as flinching and raising one hand in the bartender's direction. "Or something," he replied simply. "I'm trusting you on this."

"Shit," Jounouchi snorted, wrinkling his nose, and limited himself to sipping this time. "Don't do that. You'll make me feel like an asshole if it turns out crappy."

He got no response for that beyond a very slight twitch of the stranger's mouth that might have been a smile if he'd let it go, but then again might have been nothing more than a twitch. Jounouchi found himself staring, perplexed; the more he looked, the more familiar the stranger seemed, until he became quite certain that he'd seen the guy before.

"You live in Domino ever?" he found himself asking, cup half-raised to his mouth.

This finally got a reaction from the stranger, who had just finished making his second order. Eyes wide, he turned to face Jounouchi fully for the first time. "I was born there," he said.

"No shit!" Jounouchi could stifle a grin, pleased. Two points for him, then. "I moved there when I was ten. Went to Domino Middle School 'n everything."

Within seconds the brunet's expression had sharpened, turning bright and intense, as though he was just now trying to place Jounouchi as well. "Did you go to Domino High?"

"Nah," Jounouchi replied, lifting his cup for another sip. "I went to--"

\--and then it occurred to him that he was talking to somebody who would actually _know_ how bad Rintama's reputation was if he admitted that that was where he'd gone; that it had been his last option after the year of correctional schooling he'd been forced into halfway through his last year of Middle School; that he'd gotten the hell out of Domino as soon as he'd graduated, escaping from the gang and his family and losing himself in a different life.

"--somewhere else," he finished lamely. One of the stranger's eyebrows twitched, clearly expressing that he'd noted the painfully obvious omission, but thankfully he didn't pursue the topic.

Jounouchi cleared his throat, pouring his third cup and sipping from it carefully. "Anyway. I'm Jounouchi Katsuya."

The stranger set down his own cup (when had the bartender come back, anyway?), reaching into his back pocket and producing a business card, which he offered with both hands. "Kaiba Seto. Thank you for the sake recommendation. I'll pay for your drink."

Oh, cool. "Thanks," Jounouchi mumbled, receiving the card with both hands on instinct alone--god, he'd been here too long if that kind of thing was taking him by surprise--but why was that name so familiar? Kaiba...Kaiba...

One of his fists slammed into the bar when inspiration finally struck; not hard enough to make anything rattle, but plenty to startle Kaiba. "Kaiba Seto!" he cried, and almost pointed.

"Yes," Kaiba said slowly, staring at him.

"I used to see you on TV!" Jounouchi was laughing now, unable to help himself. "_That's_ why you looked so familiar! Yeah, I saw you sometimes on the game network--you know that's like, one of the _only_ channels I've ever seen probation officers watch? Well, that and the news, but I saw you around way more. Go figure. Lotta games with some kid with crazy hair--uh, Mutou, right?"

Kaiba's expression was again inscrutable, though not because he didn't have one. Jounouchi simply had no idea what to call it. "Probation officers?" he said.

Oh. Oh, _oops_. Jounouchi could feel his neck and ears going red. "Uh. I was in a program for a while when I was a kid. Stupid stuff." And then, because his only defense at this point was rapid topic change, "Look, was that you or not? 'Cause I'll feel really stupid if it wasn't."

"It was me," Kaiba murmured, expression beginning to smooth out again. "In another life."

Huh. Jounouchi polished off his third cup and poured a fourth--second to last from the feel of the flask. Good. Five was about his limit. "You don't play anymore?"

"Not often," Kaiba replied, and took a long, shallow sip.

Jounouchi thought about this for a few seconds, considering. More information was flooding back into his head--it had been such an awfully long time, he'd almost forgotten--filling out his picture of the businessman. "But you still make games, right? I mean, your company?"

Kaiba glanced at him again. "I d--"

"-Joey!-"

Jounouchi turned toward the sound of the voice, grinning automatically, despite his frustration at having Kaiba's answer interrupted. "-Hey, Tom.-"

Tom Taylor was a guy who had spent a lot of his life living down his name--or, as was more accurate to say for his adulthood, a lot of time living it up. The bar itself was called Taylor's Thimble, and fuck anybody who thought it was stupid. Jounouchi had actually heard the guy say that to people who made fun of it within earshot, and had even watched people--mostly tourists--get thrown out for calling it queer. Of course, it helped that the owner was a giant: six feet three inches to Jounouchi's five six. They'd met through Samura a year and a half ago, right after Jounouchi first moved to Portland, and had gotten along pretty well ever since.

Tom thumped one enormous hand into his shoulder, grinning. "-Shit, man,-" he swore enthusiastically. "-I thought you were getting out tomorrow!-"

"-So did I,-" Jounouchi laughed. "-They said was--uh, it was easier to do today. Lucky me, yeah?-"

"-Hell yeah,-" Tom agreed, folding his arms and looming unconsciously. "-They get the guy who fucked you over yet?-"

"-Not yet,-" Jounouchi scowled, fingering his now simply hot flask absently. "-They won't. But good enough I'm out.-"

"-Bet it feels nice to have the heat off,-" Tom sympathized. "-Fuck. We all knew you didn't do anything.-"

"-Me too,-" Jounouchi said shortly.

-

Tom chatted for a few more minutes, catching him up on some of the most recent changes he'd missed during his time on the inside, then ordered him another tokkuri on the house--despite his protests--and went back to work.

Jounouchi considered getting up and leaving before it could arrive, reluctant to drink two (he didn't want to show up at Samura's shitfaced, for crying out loud), but in the end he decided against it. It wasn't even nine yet, and of course he didn't have to drive; so long as he took it slow and got some water to fill in the corners, he probably wouldn't have a problem. Probably.

"It's strange. You don't look like a criminal to me."

God, he was still _there?_ Jounouchi turned, and--yes, that was Kaiba, still staring, still nursing his cup in one long-fingered hand.

"That's 'cause I'm _not_," he snorted, finishing off his first flask at last. "I just have shit luck. _You_ don't look much like a billionaire."

"Oh?" Kaiba said mildly, leaning both of his elbows on the bar now. "And what precisely do I look like?"

"Tired," Jounouchi answered instantly, and then couldn't figure out why that was the first thing he'd thought of. Sure, Kaiba had a nice set of bags under his eyes, but who didn't who actually worked for a living?

Kaiba also looked slightly taken aback, remaining silent as the bartender returned with the imposing second tokkuri. Jounouchi frowned, staring at it, and rubbed one hand across his forehead, finding a fine layer of sweat.

So much for being cold. "So what the hell do I look like, then?" he muttered, letting his hand drop to rest in his lap.

"Like you've been here too long."

Jounouchi couldn't stifle a grin at that. "Guess it shows, huh? That I don't drink a whole lot?"

Kaiba stared at him without blinking, lips slightly pursed. "That wasn't what I meant."

It took a minute for Jounouchi to figure that one out. Not that he felt much better once he had. "Guess that shows, too," he mumbled, picking up the empty tokkuri and passing it back and forth between his hands. "Well. Four years is kind of a while. Don't got much to go back to in Japan, though."

He half expected Kaiba to try offering sympathy, as most people did when he was forced to reveal this particular fact. But the businessman was silent, and Jounouchi, oddly enough, was relieved.

"Look," he said finally, pointing at the second flask and turning toward Kaiba, trying to ignore the way things shook alarmingly when he did. Looked like he'd gone through the other stuff too fast. "You wanna split that? I can't drink it all myself. I'll die."

"How dramatic," Kaiba murmured, but reached for the tokkuri even as he did, and even waited for Jounouchi to retrieve his first cup and hold it out before pouring for both of them with a perfectly steady hand. It was sort of amazing, actually. "Kanpai."

"Kanpai," Jounouchi replied, grinning, and raised the warm cup in the air.

-

"-I,-" Jounouchi announced loudly in English, his cheek pillowed on one of his arms, "-am twenty-seven this January.-"

Kaiba had no response for this, but somebody a few stools down tittered suspiciously. Jounouchi ignored her, fascinated instead by the way Kaiba was smiling. What was odd about it was that it wasn't really like a smile; sure, it involved him turning the corners of his mouth up, but it wasn't _friendly_. It was kind of dark, and kind of sarcastic, and kind of derisive all in one, but still amused. Jounouchi had really never seen anything like it.

"Twenty-seven," he repeated, returning to Japanese to better stretch out the syllables, testing them. "I've been here since I was twenty-three. And you know what? I haven't done _one damn thing_ in all that time except get thrown in prison for shit I didn't even do."

"What did you do?" Kaiba asked curiously.

"I didn't do anything!" Jounouchi shouted into his arm. "I got totally screwed!"

"No," Kaiba said carefully, holding up the flask; Jounouchi quickly drained what was left in his cup, then held it out to be refilled, unable to believe there was so much sake in one little tokkuri. It felt like he'd been drinking forever. What time was it, even? "I mean, what happened? What did you do?"

"I bought a car," Jounouchi said miserably, and hid his face in his arm.

For a moment all Jounouchi could hear was the faint background murmur of the bar, which had begun to pick up, people laughing and glass clinking and footsteps. Underneath it all the jukebox was playing Simon and Garfunkel's _A Hazy Shade of Winter_.

"I love this song," he mumbled, not looking up.

"Wait," Kaiba said slowly. "You got arrested for buying a car?" And then, "This is the original, you know."

"What, somebody covered it?" Jounouchi lifted his face at last to squint at Kaiba, whose outline wasn't behaving itself in the slightest. "And the fucking car was stolen. The asshole I bought it from _stole_ it and sold it to me. I actually gave him _money!_"

He buried his face in his arm once more, suddenly furious all over again. He had really been trying to get over it, but three months wasn't nearly enough. Three years, maybe. "Anyway. Guy never filed the report of sale I filled out for him, right? Well, I didn't fucking know, so I take the damn title in the next day to get it transferred, and guess what? It's not _signed_."

Jounouchi paused here to knock back the cup Kaiba had just poured for him, wetting his throat. "Okay. No problem. Kind of a pain in the ass, but. You know. Whatever. So I go to city hall to figure out if I can get it done without having to track the original guy down, and the next thing I know they've got a stolen vehicle flag, and _I'm_ in fucking court. Come to find the asshole I bought it from skipped town, and of course they dig up this record I've got from ten thousand years ago, plus the fact that I'm here on a Visa, so obviously it's _me_ dicking around and lying about everything, and _I_ gotta be the one who stole it in the first place."

Again, for a long moment following his tirade Jounouchi could hear nothing but the sounds of the bar, strangely distant. Then Kaiba said quietly, "Then how did you get out?"

"Act of divinity," Jounouchi sighed, closing his eyes. "The asshole's old landlady showed up last week with the report of sale I filled out, right before they could finish working out whether they were gonna deport me or not. Had no idea about anything, 'cause I never knew the guy's name, so they couldn't really look for him. But she tried to file it, and that goes and re-opens the case, and all of a sudden they've got the right name and it's sorry, get on with your life, man. They wouldn't even pay me back what I put out for the fucking car."

A third moment of silence passed before Kaiba asked with soft incredulity, "You bought a car from a third party whose name you didn't even know?"

"Friend of a friend of a friend," Jounouchi mumbled, opening his eyes back up. "I know. Real stupid. 'm good at that."

Kaiba was turning his cup around in one hand slowly, staring at it. "I think you're very lucky," he murmured at last. "You could have been in for much longer."

"I _know_," Jounouchi moaned, grabbing his hair. "That's the real shit part. Like, I lost all that fucking money--but I got out so fast. Only not so fast. You ever been in prison?"

Kaiba just stared at him.

Jounouchi snorted quietly. "'Course not. Stupid question. Well, it's a fucking long time. Quarter of a year. And 'm gonna be twenty-seven."

"At least they'll strike it from your record," Kaiba offered neutrally.

...okay, that was a point. "At least," he agreed, frowning. Then he rolled his head back in Kaiba's direction, scratching at one of his shoulders after an itch. "So what happened to you, anyway? Like, what's wrong with your day that you gotta come get pissed at a bar 'n waste time talkin' to an idiot like me?"

"I'm not drunk," Kaiba murmured, frowning, and set his cup down on his coaster--or tried to. The rim missed the mark by almost two inches. Kaiba's frown deepened.

"We," Jounouchi said with delicate precision, trying not to laugh, "are totally wasted, man. Dare you to stand up."

"Nothing was wrong with my day," Kaiba said with dignity, picking his cup back up and emptying it. "Everything went perfectly."

"Goddamnit," Jounouchi mumbled, having just remembered Samura, and his original plan to drop in on the guy tonight. When exactly had he gotten so damn hammered, anyway? Why was he telling his sob story to this weird billionaire when he could be getting some real food and sleep? _What the hell was going on?_ "What time is it?"

Kaiba pulled up his suit jacket sleeve, peering down at a sleek, skinny silver watch. "Nine thirty-two."

"God_damnit_," Jounouchi said again, picking up the tokkuri and waiting for Kaiba to hold out his cup. "What the hell've we been talking about for an hour?"

Kaiba promptly did so, blinking. "Your incarceration," he said after a moment, watching as Jounouchi poured the last of the sake. "And my day. Which was fine."

"And?"

Another moment. "...I have no idea."

"Great." Jounouchi chewed absently on his sleeve for a few seconds, trying to work out his next plan of action. "So if your day was so awesome," he asked while he was at it, discomfited by the silence, "what're you doin' here?"

"What?"

"_Why are you here?_" Jounouchi said loudly, lifting himself up a little on his elbows.

Kaiba shot him a vaguely disdainful glare. "I'm not deaf. I'm here because everything went perfectly."

\--wait, what? Jounouchi shook his head, sure that he was missing something in that. "Nothing's wrong, so you're--getting drunk off your ass?"

"No," Kaiba said, scowling. "Because nothing is good, and nothing is bad, and nothing is anything except on time. I'm here because nothing is anything."

Jounouchi snorted into his sleeve at that. "Sounds like 'n existential crisis to me, man."

"Crisis?" Kaiba murmured, staring at the white tokkuri now and frowning. "There's no crisis. Why would you say that?" And then, softer, "I'm an extremely successful person."

"Sure," Jounouchi agreed, abruptly feeling sorry for the guy. Obviously he was having some real issues. "Sorry. I shouldn't talk about it."

"No," Kaiba said sharply, turning to stare at him. "Talk about it. Please."

Uncertain of what to say to that, Jounouchi stared back silently, mouth dry again.

Abruptly Kaiba said, "You don't care who I am, do you?" His eyes were oddly wide, the strange blue of them enhanced by the bar's lighting. Jounouchi thought of the husky from earlier that day, and startled himself with the comparison.

"I dunno what you mean," he said quietly, shaking his head, then wishing he hadn't.

"I mean you're not intimidated by me," Kaiba elaborated.

Perplexed, Jounouchi swallowed thickly. _Black Hole Sun_ was playing on the jukebox now, which was fucking _weird_. He had thought it was all seventies and eighties stuff. "Hell no," he said, frowning. "You think I should be?"

"I'm glad you're not," Kaiba muttered, almost too soft to hear. His expression shifted slightly, his eyebrows going up just a fraction. "What are you doing tonight?"

...whoa.

_Whoa_. Hold on a second. Jounouchi blinked a few times, trying to figure out whether he was so far gone he was seeing things. Hearing things. Whatever. "Sittin' in a bar and drinking," he said at last, slowly. Testing. "And. Uh. Being picked up? Man, are you picking me up?"

"I could not be," Kaiba replied elusively, eyes still wide. "It depends entirely on how humiliated I'm about to be."

Okay, this just kept getting stupider. "Hang on. Man. Kaiba. Man. We--we talked about me just getting out of _prison_, right?"

"Correct," Kaiba said.

"How about me being a total waste of life?"

"We hadn't gotten there yet."

"We're there now," Jounouchi said firmly. "So. So now what d'you say?"

Kaiba was silent for a few seconds. Then he licked his lips. "What is the waste of life doing tonight?"

Huh.

Jounouchi thought about this for a long moment, attempting to absorb it. Distantly he was glad for all the alcohol he'd just drunk, which made this attempt much easier. Also it was probably the reason he was getting propositioned in the first place, but whatever. Somebody he'd seen on TV eleven years ago was hitting on him. And he was even pretty good looking. That was kind of cool, wasn't it?

Except it was also totally _bizarre_. Jounouchi thought about this for another moment. He thought about the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago he'd been sleeping like shit in a prison cell and counting the minutes until he got out. He thought about the fact that he hadn't been in a relationship with anybody, male or female or famous, for more than a year.

Then Jounouchi cleared his throat, sitting up slowly. "Let's take a walk."

Kaiba looked perplexed at this, but after a moment nodded, reaching into his jacket pocket for a skinny black wallet. "Alright. I'll pay."

Jounouchi was glaring instantly, pointing one finger threateningly in his face. "You pay for you. _I_ pay for you. I mean me. Damnit. Got it?"

Kaiba looked even more perplexed. "I said I'd pay. Earlier. I said it."

"For _advice_," Jounouchi shot back. _Goddamnit_. He wasn't going to get bought. He wasn't necessarily going to do anything more than take a walk with a weird businessman, but he sure as _fuck_ wasn't going to get bought.

At first Kaiba looked like he really wanted to protest this, but eventually gave up the inclination, nodding again and turning to wave down the bartender.

Jounouchi, meanwhile, took his first good look around in a while, and found that the bar was almost entirely full. Also Tom was over in the corner by the door which led to the stairs, which in turn led up to the bathrooms and his office.

Okay, that was great. "-Tom!-" he shouted, waving.

A quarter of the bar turned to look at him, Tom included. For a second the proprietor just stared and grinned, then promptly turned away from the door he'd just opened and made his way over, looking thoroughly amused for some totally unquantifiable reason. "-Had enough, Joey?-"

"-I have had enough,-" Jounouchi agreed firmly, pulling some likely-looking bills from his wallet and tossing a squinting glance at Kaiba. "-How much did we drink?-"

"-Apparently too much,-" Tom said obnoxiously, holding up one hand to stop him from waving the bills in his face. "-Save it. You can pay me later, okay? I know where you work.-"

That sounded like a fantastic idea, because if there was one thing Jounouchi was not up for in this instant, it was math. He put the bills and his wallet back, nodding in satisfaction, then began to get carefully off of his stool, which was definitely several feet farther from the ground than it had been when he'd first sat down.

"-You are _so_ drunk, Joey,-" Tom remarked, watching him casually.

"-Really?-" Jounouchi mumbled, sarcastic, and finally found his feet, where he swayed for a few seconds, readjusting. _Fuck_. He really was, wasn't he? "-I don't do this again. Hey. Look. Call Samura, please? Tell him I got out?-"

"-Sure,-" Tom said, starting to frown now. "-But aren't you headed there now? You want me to have one of the girls give you a ride?-"

Jounouchi frowned, shaking his head. The room spun unsettlingly. "-No, no. No, I go--I'll go tomorrow. Got to keep this sad guy company.-" He pointed at Kaiba here, who stared at Tom silently for a few seconds before dipping his head in greeting.

Tom stared back. "-That's...nice of you.-" It was at this point that Jounouchi noticed how Kaiba wasn't much shorter than the foreigner. Then he couldn't imagine why he'd noticed, and promptly forgot it. "-You sure?-"

"-Sure, sure,-" Jounouchi stressed, waving one hand at him, well aware that his grammar was going to hell in a hand basket and failing to care in the slightest. "-Turn out that we grew up in the same place. Crazy. We talk about it forever. 'Night, Tom.-"

Tom thumped him on the shoulder again, which almost--but not quite--sent him straight into the bar. "-Okay, blondie. Take it easy.-"

"-Sure,-" Jounouchi said again, and turned at last to head outside, walking carefully through the ocean the air had turned into, listening to the jukebox in the background (_Walk on the Wild Side_, now. Of course), and to Kaiba's surprisingly soft footsteps as he followed close behind.

So he'd been able to stand up after all. Go figure.

-

Out on the sidewalk Jounouchi was actually shocked by how cold it had gotten, sucking in a sharp breath and shoving his hands into his pockets, blinking furiously. "Shit," he hissed quietly, knowing somehow that Kaiba would be close enough to hear it.

Sure enough, when he turned Kaiba was standing only a few feet away, staring down at him silently. At some point he'd put on a coat; a nice button down thing, smooth black wool and straight, clean lines.

Shit. He really was a billionaire.

Kaiba frowned vaguely, pushing his own hands into his pockets. "You're quite short."

"You got a problem with that?" Jounouchi flexed his hands defensively within his pockets and wondered if this, of all ridiculous things, was going to be what put an end to this most ridiculous of situations.

But all Kaiba said was, "No," unmoving and expressionless. "You were slouching inside. I couldn't tell. Where are we walking?"

Where _were_ they walking? "-Holladay,-" Jounouchi said after a minute of thought, frowning. "'S a park. Got a water fountain."

"Alright," Kaiba said softly.

So they started walking.

-

The cold was somewhat sobering, though not nearly enough to clear out his head. Not to get it as clear as it needed to be, at least.

What the hell was he doing?

"Look," he started a few blocks from the park, scowling. Traffic wasn't exactly agonizing for a Monday evening, but the sea of moving headlights was still dizzying, disorienting. "I don't get why you're askin'. I mean, askin' _me_."

"I can't explain it either," Kaiba replied, still walking a respectful foot or so behind him. "I just wanted to ask."

"So you did," Jounouchi reflected, trying to decide whether this made sense of not.

"So I did," Kaiba affirmed.

"Well, that's--great." Jounouchi wiggled his fingers in an attempt to warm them, wishing desperately that he had something to cover his neck. "So you do this a lot?"

"Never in my whole life."

Interesting. Jounouchi paused at a crosswalk, turning back to watch Kaiba. Then he laughed a little, ruefully. "Me neither."

The brunet shifted from one foot to the other, then moved forward at last to stand next to him, pressing the button for the walk and looking away to watch the light. Like Jounouchi probably should have done. Oops. "It was just a question. It creates no obligation."

God, who talked like that anymore? And drunk, too. Jounouchi frowned, pulling his hands from his pockets and tucking them under his armpits instead. "I know. You think 'm stupid?"

Two unnervingly blue eyes turned in a perfect arc, pinning him to the spot. "I don't know yet. Are you?"

Jounouchi stared, frozen. Then a grin worked its way onto his face, all resignation and quiet, self-deprecating amusement. "Kinda."

Kaiba's mouth pursed faintly. "Then that makes two of us."

In Jounouchi's peripheral vision, the walk light changed.

-

The park was quiet, but not uninhabited, the soft glow of the antique globe lamps diffusing through the late evening, inviting. There were jack-o-lanterns, real carved pumpkins, clustered around the gate, lit from within by weakly flickering candles, seeming to watch them as they moved. A few small families and a half-dozen couples passed by them as Jounouchi led the way toward the public bathrooms, where he knew the water fountain was.

Upon finding it, Jounouchi immediately braced himself against the stone rim, closed and opened his eyes, took a deep breath, then stabbed the heel of one hand against the button and made a face.

"I'm so gonna regret this," he mumbled. Then he stuck his face in the frigid stream of water and moved it around, holding his breath.

Sure enough, for about three seconds he was absolutely certain his eyes were going to pop right out of his head. Then everything went sort of pleasantly numb, and he withdrew, dripping, to rub his hands vigorously across his cheeks and eyelids. The rest of the water got brushed back into his hair, his scalp tingling at the cold.

Kaiba was staring unashamedly when he finally turned back around, mouth open the tiniest bit.

"What?" Jounouchi said, sniffing to clear water from his nose.

"You could have done that back at the bar."

"Nope," Jounouchi replied firmly, shaking his head. "Needed to walk a bit first."

And then he was, without warning, extremely light headed, so much so that he almost sagged right to the ground. It was the edge of the water fountain that saved him, resting just high enough on the wall for him to grab onto before he could go all the way over.

Kaiba looked almost hilariously alarmed, moving toward him with one hand extended uncertainly. "Are you alright?"

"Awesome," Jounouchi gritted, squeezing his eyes shut. "Brain ache. You ever eat ice cream too fast?"

"No," Kaiba said.

Jounouchi snorted, somehow not surprised by this. He did seem like an _everything in moderation_ kind of guy--which was probably why he was the one standing straight and composed instead of hanging off a water fountain in a public park for dear life.

Boy, that sounded sad. Jounouchi began to blink furiously, trying to bring everything back into focus. "Try it sometime."

Kaiba was biting one of his lips doubtfully. "I should get you home."

This was, for some reason, extremely disappointing. Jounouchi straightened up carefully, unable to stifle a frown. "Don't do that. Just gimme a minute."

Lowering his hand, Kaiba tucked it back into his pocket, shaking his head gently. "No, I really should."

No good. Jounouchi sighed, feeling oddly defeated, and leaned slowly back against the bathroom wall, tilting his head up to stare at the sky. It had hazed over partially in the last few hours, soft red clouds sitting low above the buildings. Five particularly enormous cumuli were drifting silently overhead, one half-obscuring the moon.

"How old are you, anyway?" he heard himself ask from far away, curious.

Kaiba's fancy shoes scratched softly against the cement, the tall man shifting again from foot to foot. "Twenty-seven."

Jounouchi grinned at that, pleased. Three points for him. Time for a fucking wish. "Same as I'll be."

"Today was my birthday."

Looking away from what was visible of the moon, Jounouchi blinked at Kaiba, and Kaiba's flat, serious face, for several seconds. He could remember it more clearly now, brief flashes of him emblazoned on a variety of cheap screens. He didn't look much different. Better dressed, more mature, but fundamentally the same face. The wind picked up, tossing some of his bangs into his eyes. "Happy birthday."

Kaiba's mouth tilted into an awkward, bitter smile. "If you say so."

"Good day for both of us," Jounouchi continued.

The smile got a little less awkward. "If you say so."

"Okay," Jounouchi said, so soft that the words were nearly lost in the rising wind. "Let's do it. Where're you staying?"

For a long second Kaiba looked indescribably torn between doing the moral, upstanding thing, or the the thing he was obviously much more interested in. Then he lifted one hand and pointed over his shoulder. "Right there."

Confused, Jounouchi looked in the direction he was indicating.

At first all he saw were trees; then he got less stupid and looked up, and over the tree line saw the neat edges of a high-end hotel he passed all the time, the kind of thing he'd never noticed in anything _but_ passing. It was always the park he was headed for. "You're kidding."

"The DoubleTree," Kaiba elaborated simply, unmoving. "Satisfactory meeting rooms."

"Okay," Jounouchi said again, too far out of his body by this point to even get worked up over the unreal number of coincidences going down tonight. "Okay, lead the way."

He pushed himself off of the wall as he said it, took one step, and was granted precisely two seconds--plus a great view of Kaiba's startled expression--to think of how extreme his embarrassment was going to be in the morning before his legs disappeared from underneath him. He was unconscious long before he ever made it to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Jounouchi saw when he woke up was Son Gokuu's determined face floating overhead, one blocky fist raised, the other brandishing the nyoi-bou.

"God, Samura," he mumbled, turning his aching face away from the bright poster. "You know you're way too old to watch that shit, right?"

"Nonsense," Samura replied coolly, putting a clay teapot down on the electric kotatsu currently dominating most of the floor space, then sitting with tremendous dignity, drawing the futon up over his legs. "You're never too old for Dragon Ball Z. You need to throw up?"

Jounouchi gave this question a moment of serious consideration before at last shaking his head, sitting up cautiously with a low, soft groan. It was light outside, but still clouded over, the sunshine turned grey and weak, spread thin across the little room. "Nah. Head hurts like a son of a bitch, though." He also had to pee like a racehorse, but that could wait, at least for a couple more minutes.

"Tough break, kid," Samura snorted, and poured out two cups of steaming tea. "Get over here while it's hot. You've got some explaining to do."

Well, that didn't sound ominous. Jounouchi picked his way carefully and reluctantly across the floor, noting as he caught sight of the digital clock on the far wall that it was about ten in the morning. He still had a good hour and a half till the bar opened, which was more than enough time for Samura to make him feel sixteen all over again.

Samura was a father, and very good at acting like one to absolutely everybody he knew who was more than five years younger than him, despite a divorce and severely limited visitation schedule. He was also, to put it mildly, a food fanatic, as well as a geek and closet otaku in his spare time. Fortunately this closeting meant his living space was never filled from top to bottom with precise models of his favorite scantily clad pretty girls, but he was a real poster connoisseur. Hence Son Gokuu's face watching them from above.

Obsessions aside, he was a useful guy to know, steady and self-assured, despite his unfortunate family situation. About ten years older than Jounouchi, he was much better acquainted with the nuances of Americans than the blond, in part because he'd lived in Oregon for more than half his life, and in part because he'd married one. The bar had been his father's until about seven years ago, when the old man had finally passed the torch a few short months before passing on himself.

Jounouchi had actually met him the first time in Kobe, while Samura was there for the official funeral and interment. At the time their acquaintance had been a matter of economy, both finding themselves vying one evening for the last table in a little noodle shop, and both more than happy to share it so long as they got something to eat.

It'd been a total coincidence meeting him again. Jounouchi had walked into the sushi bar just a week after moving, looking for work, and they had, inexplicably, recognized one another, despite the number of years which had lapsed since their first encounter. After all, they'd hit it off pretty well over that one meal, kind of like what had happened with Kaiba last night, only without the severe gay undertones, and--

\--holy shit. _Kaiba_.

"Um," he mumbled, sitting down on the other side of the kotatsu and pulling the futon sandwiched between the tabletop and the frame up over his own legs, wiggling his toes in the warmth. "How'd I get back here?"

"That being one of the questions you really never want to find yourself asking, Jounouchi," Samura said ostentatiously, pushing one of the cups in his direction. "What the hell happened? I mean, I understand wanting to celebrate the recognition of your innocence--or ignorance, if we're being accurate--but did you really have to go three sheets to the wind like that?"

"Geez, Samura," Jounouchi complained, making a face at him. "Jam it in deeper."

"I say everything out of love," Samura replied pleasantly. "The thought of you passed out in an alley somewhere like a vagrant isn't exactly enjoyable. I mean, you could've just waited until we could get a good party together here. And it's not like you in the first place to drink like that. What happened?"

Jounouchi pressed the teacup against his right temple, trying to ward off the throbbing headache currently taking up residence there. Scenes from the night before were beginning to fall back into his head, though in no particular order: walking into the bar, the park, snatches of different conversations. "There's not much to tell. I just wasn't paying attention to how much I was putting in. That's it. You want a written apology or something? I already feel plenty stupid, if that's what you're looking for."

Samura scrutinized him disapprovingly, mouth pinched. "You need to take better care of yourself. It's not really any of my business, so I won't say anymore about it, but you need to. Think very carefully about your life."

He paused then to sip his tea. Jounouchi's stomach was rolling uncomfortably, his bladder aching, but he followed the older man's example, knowing he'd be happy later once the liquid settled in to rehydrate him. Also it was easier to avoid saying something stupid, something defensive and pissed off like _what the hell d'you think I just spent the last three months doing?_ when his mouth was full.

The tea was too bitter for his tastes, but pleasantly hot. Jounouchi cleared his throat around the traveling warmth, returning to his original question in the hope of effectively changing the topic: "So how did I get back, anyway?"

"Tom brought you." Samura set his cup down as he spoke, reaching behind himself for a small sandalwood box, from which he drew a few brushes, an ink stone, and several sheets of paper. In his spare time he made a small hobby of designing the bar's menus, which were changed to compliment the seasons as they passed. "Said one of the other patrons brought you back dead to the world. Wanted to know where you lived, too, so he could call you a cab, but Tom was good enough to do it himself. You should take him something this evening."

"Sure," Jounouchi said distractedly, busy dissecting the rest of that sentence. "But it _was_ Kaiba who helped out in the park. Okay." And who wanted to know where he could be found later, apparently. Interesting.

Samura hesitated in the middle of removing a small vial of water from the box, eyes blinking open wider behind his small glasses. "Who? I don't know any Kaiba around here."

"Um." Crap. Samura was a video game fan, too--there was no way he wouldn't know the name. But maybe he wouldn't. But--crap, he'd already hesitated way too long to lie convincingly either way. _Crap_. "...Kaiba Seto."

Samura's mouth fell open.

Well, that answered that question.

"_Kaiba Seto?_" he demanded, incredulous, and actually dropped the vial in his shock. It clattered quietly back into the box, unnoticed. "Kaiba Seto was in _Tom's bar?_"

"Sure was," Jounouchi confirmed, grinning nervously. This could go any number of ways, many of which he didn't really want to contemplate.

Fortunately it ended up going the most predictable one: "Why didn't he come _here?_ We're just over the river. Kaiba-san picked a gaijin bar over one of ours?"

Jounouchi couldn't prevent himself from making a face at that, shifting his legs a little beneath the futon. "I think he just went to the first place he found. He's up at the DoubleTree for business, I guess."

Jounouchi had never actually seen Samura's eyes get quite so wide. "He told you where he was _staying?_"

Uncomfortable, Jounouchi shifted again, setting his teacup back down on the kotatsu. "Not really. We walked by it while we were talking, that's all."

He had barely finished that sentence before he found himself holding a hand up to stop Samura, already guessing what he was in the middle of opening his mouth to ask: "Look, I had no idea who he was at first, okay? I just sat down next to him at the Thimble by chance. Turns out he's from Domino too, so we had some stuff to talk about once I got his name. It so wasn't a big deal."

_Except for the part where he hit on you._

Moving on.

It really was true, wasn't it? He had grown up in the same city as a celebrity like that, shared all of the same streets and restaurants and services with him. Now that he thought about it, he'd even known at the time, if only peripherally.

But shit, Domino had always been _full_ of famous people, none of whom Jounouchi had ever met. He just hadn't lived that kind of life. By the time he'd cleaned himself up enough to start moving through better circles, he'd already made it to Kobe.

"It's so weird." Jounouchi picked up his teacup and sipped from it reflectively, his stomach having settled down a little at last. "You know I almost went to the same high school as him?"

"Amazing," Samura murmured, still staring at him. "You could even have been in the same class. How lucky."

Jounouchi considered this. Then he found himself shaking his head, grinning crookedly. "Not really. I would've hated his guts."

Retrieving the vial of water at last, Samura shot him a curious frown, starting to look more like himself again. "Was he rude?"

Now _that_ required some thought. Jounouchi wrinkled his brow as he did, pushing out a sharp breath through his nose. "Not really _rude_. Just kinda--cold. Really damn formal, too. I would've thought he was a total stuck up pain in the ass if I'd known him back then."

The older man shook his head quietly, one corner of his mouth raised in a half-smile.

Jounouchi couldn't help grinning, even knowing that he was the one being mocked. "What? We all got our stupid phases. We don't get to be men till we grow out of them, right?"

"True," Samura murmured, and picked up an ink stick to rub in the water he'd just finished pouring, adding teasingly as he did, "I'll bring something nice for your seijin-shiki when you finally get there."

"Screw you," Jounouchi laughed, ignoring his head as it pounded in time with the sound. "You're just bitter 'cause you're going grey already, jii-san."

Samura laughed as well; a low, rolling chuckle. Then for a moment there was nothing but the sound of traffic outside, the soft scratch of dry ink across stone.

Jounouchi's bladder felt like it was going to _explode_. "You know what I'm gonna do?"

Samura lifted his eyebrows questioningly, not looking up from the ink he was mixing.

"I am going to take a shower," Jounouchi announced, enjoying every word. "I'm gonna take the longest damn shower in the history of showers. Okay?"

"Okay," Samura agreed, tapping the ink stick gently against the edge of the stone and inspecting the finished product. "Your clothes are in a bag in the kitchen. You want to get back to work today or tomorrow?"

"Today," Jounouchi replied instantly, rising only a little unsteadily to his feet and making his way over to the ladder which led down into said kitchen, where he hesitated. "Hey. Samura?"

"Hm?"

Jounouchi resisted the urge to clear his throat, wanting to say this as plainly as possible. "Thanks. For everything. I mean it."

For a few seconds Samura said nothing. Then, softly: "Go get your things."

Nodding, Jounouchi turned his attention to navigating the ladder. It would be embarrassing as hell to trip and ruin the moment.

-

Stripping a few moments later for his first real shower in three months, Jounouchi waited for the water to heat up until it steamed before finally stepping under.

For the first few minutes he just stood and let the heat soak in, thinking longingly of all the real baths he'd had in his life that he'd taken for granted. Sure, they had tubs in America, but even in buildings like this they didn't make the floors right for proper washing, and the thought of sitting and scrubbing in his own dirty water was just too gross. He always opted for showers when he could; at least they were more familiar.

As it stood, this shower did wonders for his hangover, though it had by no means disappeared by the time he stepped out, scrubbing a towel gently over his hair and standing for another few minutes in the steam, air-drying.

It was in this moment that he finally let his mind go back to everything that had happened the night before. Those last few minutes before he'd passed out in particular.

Oddly, it wasn't the fact that he'd almost had sex with a total stranger--a national icon, but a stranger nonetheless--that dominated his thoughts. Rather, it was the fact that this probably wouldn't have bothered him much, and especially the fact that this proved without a shadow of a doubt that he'd really, finally gotten over being bothered by his occasional attraction to guys.

It had terrified him when he'd first started noticing it--god, more than six years ago now, a good year after he'd moved to Kobe. The worst part had been not knowing whether he'd always been that way or if he was just changing fundamentally with his new situation. It had taken a while for him to admit that it was probably the former, and then an even longer while to get over a whole host of battling emotions that knowledge inspired; frustration that he'd wasted so many years being oblivious, and anger that he was about to make his life even more complicated, and disgust that he was too pathetic to be able to maintain a relationship with a woman.

Fortunately for him, the first guy he ever slept with had the good manners afterwards to slap him upside the head a bit when he revealed these thoughts, stopping him before he could go too far with the self-pity. His point after the head-slapping was pretty simple: some people liked one thing, some people another, and some people could go either way. More for them. So what the hell was Jounouchi's problem? He'd just opened up a whole new part of the world for himself, not shut the door on another one.

Put that way, Jounouchi had to admit, it didn't sound half bad. So what _was_ his problem?

His problem, he had decided eventually, was actually two problems (as his problems so often were). First, that he hadn't been self-aware enough right from the beginning to realize that eyeballing the bodies of some of the men around him admiringly _did_ kind of count as checking them out, and second, that he had a lot of trouble getting over an ingrained belief that a relationship consisted of a feminine half and a masculine half. Personally, he liked guys who were obviously guys; if he wanted to date someone girly, he'd date a fucking girl. But there was no way in hell _he_ was going to act like a girl just to balance out the equation. This dilemma had made his first few encounters with men particularly rocky, if not unpleasant.

Then one day it had occurred to him that none of it fucking mattered, and everything got a hell of a lot easier.

However, getting through all of this took a while. By the time he was finally adjusting to this new sense of self, various forces had started to shift around in his life once more, and before he knew it he found himself moving again, this time to a completely different country. And that had made things difficult in a whole new variety of ways.

But this thing with Kaiba--this was weirdly comforting. Sure, he'd been drunk, but it really hadn't bothered him in the slightest (and in fact still didn't bother him) that the one asking had been a guy. Even at his most self-assured in Kobe he'd still felt a little uncomfortable whenever he went out with a man over a woman. This encounter, by contrast, had felt totally natural. The only real hang-up had been the fact that he didn't know a damn thing about the businessman personally.

And of course it all happened on his first night out of prison. Life was pretty fucking weird sometimes.

Shaking his head, Jounouchi went for his clothes at last, moving as he felt the temperature beginning to drop noticeably; fresh boxers, jeans, a plain long-sleeved shirt.

It occurred to him rather abruptly as he was emptying the pockets of his old pair of jeans, retrieving his wallet and loose change, that he was also a little disappointed about the way things had gone. True, it was great to know that he hadn't been a dumbass and done it while drunk off his ass, comforting to think that he wouldn't have to spend the rest of life wondering whether he'd only done it _because_ he was drunk--but he was sober now, and he still wanted to. Wished he had.

The right back pocket of his dirtied jeans crinkled in his hand when he felt it, testing to make certain he wasn't forgetting anything. Perplexed, he dug a hand in and fished out a piece of paper, which he promptly unfolded and read.

Oh, of course. His detention certificate. Shaking his head, Jounouchi ran his eyes slowly down it, wondering sarcastically if he'd get anything back on his taxes for including a photo-copy with PORTLAND FUCKED UP, CAN I HAVE MY MONEY BACK NOW? written across the top.

Probably not. Not that that made it any less hilarious to dream about.

He was about to fold the paper back up when he finally noticed an odd white square down in one corner that was not, he realized upon closer inspection, actually a white square. It was a smaller piece of paper, one he didn't remember receiving yesterday. Perplexed all over again, he turned this one over in the cradle of the larger sheet, and this time read:

_1103_.

And that was all.

Frowning, Jounouchi folded the detention certificate up into fresh quarters and tucked it into the back pocket of the jeans he was wearing now, heading out into the main room and skirting around the kotatsu on his way to the ladder. Samura was down below by now, getting things ready for the rapidly approaching opening hour.

It was a testament to how very rarely Jounouchi had stayed in hotels throughout his life that it didn't occur to him until he was halfway down the ladder that 1103 was a room number. And it was in the end this revelation that finally made him trip, whereupon he was most thoroughly embarrassed, and also just a little bruised.

-

"You know, Jounouchi," Samura said mildly, watching as the blond dropped his third stack of masu in as many hours, "you could start work tomorrow if you're too damn hung over to even carry dishes. Unless you're working on a manzai routine on the side."

"-Would love to, boss,-" Jounouchi chirped, batting his eyelashes ridiculously as he knelt to collect the wooden cups, "-but where would I find straight man?-" And then, grinning hugely: "-Unless you want to do for me, tou-san.-"

Samura snorted loudly, already moving back into the bar proper. "You'll have to work on that one more, kid. All your audiences won't be bilingual."

"Oh, yeah," Jounouchi agreed, rising to his feet with the cups cradled in one arm, fortunately all still intact. "It would be a real heart breaker if they didn't get the lame gay crack."

Samura, however, was already gone. Sighing quietly, Jounouchi made his way over to the sink--his sink, as he now thought of it rather fondly--and dropped the masu one by one into the water, watching them bob erratically before eventually taking on enough weight to sink.

Damnit.

What was he supposed to do _now?_ He had all the information he needed to track Kaiba down--but why? What reason could he possibly have? The night was over. It was all over, and Kaiba would definitely have still been drunk when he included that tidbit of information with Jounouchi's safe delivery. Chances were good that he sitting in his room right now downing half a bottle of aspirin and wondering what the hell had been wrong with him, wishing he could get the paper back.

He'd throw it away. That was exactly what he was going to do. God and all the spirits knew that the last thing he needed in his life was more trouble, so he'd throw the damn paper away and forget about all of it.

Damnit.

Drying the masu off and restacking them, Jounouchi made his way over to the refrigerator and stared inside critically, gauging how much of each staple was left. Part of his job usually involved running for supplies in the morning when the market by the convention center first opened--but of course Samura had already done it himself today. Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Jounouchi returned to his drying and arranging, still cleaning up from the first-hour rush.

"White tuna, please!"

Really? Pursing his lips, Jounouchi returned to the fridge and retrieved the requested ingredient, ran it out to Samura behind the bar, then went back into the kitchen, surprised that someone had slipped in so close to their midday closing instead of just waiting until they re-opened at five. Not that he wouldn't have done the same thing himself were he hungry enough.

He wondered where Kaiba was eating today.

_Damnit_.

Jounouchi was distracted enough that he passed the last half-hour before closing without thinking of much at all beyond how irritated he was, going out to collect the single late-diner's dishes on instinct alone, then standing back at the sink and washing, drying, frowning, then washing again.

The trouble was that the more he thought about it, the more he realized he probably didn't even rate regret on the businessman's part. Kaiba was more likely in a fresh series of meetings right now, perfectly recovered from any hangover he might have had, and probably not thinking about him at all. After all, what did he care about hitting on some nobody in a bar a third of the world away? Nothing had even happened.

Out in the bar proper Jounouchi could hear Samura bustling around at the front, putting up the closing sign and taking down the noren and telling some poor asshole who'd come in too late that that he was, in fact, too late, and to come back in a few hours if he was really that interested. Probably a tourist; it happened a lot, particularly with Westerners who didn't understand that the sushi wasn't pre-made.

Sighing again, Jounouchi began re-stacking the dishes he'd just finished, allowing himself as he did to wallow--just a little more--in some indulgent self-pity, combining his two mental images just for the full miserable effect: right now Kaiba was probably finished with his meetings, sitting back in his fancy room and not thinking about Jounouchi at all, the aspirin long since dispensed with. And Jounouchi was still going nowhere, wasting time thinking about him.

Make that _definitely_ going to throw the paper away.

"Jounouchi! Idiot, would you listen?"

"Huh?" Jounouchi said, looking up from his absorption with the soapy water to blink at Samura, who was holding up one half of the Hokusai noren which separated the kitchen from the bar and leaning in to glare at him. "What?"

"Kaiba-san!" Samura hissed, gesturing for him to stop what he was doing. "Kaiba-san's waiting! Would you get out here?"

...okay, or Kaiba was sitting in Samura's Sushi, waiting to see him. "But we're closed."

"Idiot!" Samura hissed again, then spun around and went back out.

_Goddamnit_.

-

Kaiba was, naturally, sitting at the bar when Jounouchi emerged. He was more casually dressed today; classy, pinstriped suit jacket thrown over slacks and a black turtleneck instead of a full-on suit.

Jounouchi was frowning before he could even think of being nervous, settling his hands on his hips. It occurred to him that he had been expecting it to be a joke. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Samura's hand came from nowhere, descending to slap sharply across his head. "Where are your manners, Jounouchi? Don't talk to an honored guest that way! And one who pulled _your_ drunk ass off the street, too! Show some gratitude!"

"_Ow!_" Jounouchi hissed, shielding his head and glaring through the cradle of his arms. "I was getting there! Back off, Samura!"

"I came to check on your health," Kaiba said calmly, as though he wasn't currently bearing witness to a scene of unjust violence.

"Oh," said Jounouchi, and came out around the bar to drop onto the stool one over from Kaiba's, spinning back and forth on it casually. "Yeah, I'm fine. Didn't puke this morning or anything."

Behind the bar, Samura made a pained noise. Jounouchi ignored him. "How about you? Sorry if I freaked you out, by the way."

"No apology necessary," Kaiba murmured. His mouth twitched ever-so-slightly, the maybe-almost-a-smile expression. "Nice apron."

In point of fact, Jounouchi's once-white half-apron needed to be replaced yesterday, and had ever since he'd accidentally washed it with a load of reds half a year ago. Needless to say, he hadn't gotten around to it quite yet. "I tell people it's a fashion statement."

"It's a statement of something, at least," Samura said darkly, then turned a bright, professional smile in Kaiba's direction. "Are you hungry, Kaiba-san? It would be an honor."

Kaiba looked vaguely surprised. "I thought you were closing."

The blond couldn't help throwing his hands up at this bit of vindication, scoffing. "That's what I said!"

Samura's smile got wider. "Jounouchi, stop talking. Bring your guest a menu before the sun sets. Some sake to start, Kaiba-san?"

Jounouchi was pretty certain he was the only one who caught the way Kaiba's eyes contracted at the question, pinching ever-so-slightly, but that didn't make it any less hilarious. "No," he said, perfectly composed. "Just tea. If it's not too much trouble, of course."

"No trouble," Samura said genially, already rearranging his ingredients across the counter. Jounouchi got up quietly, making his way toward the back room, and only remembered to jog back and hand over a menu when he passed the holder on the wall. "Just think, this way you get the bar to yourself."

He could only catch the first part of Kaiba's response to this ("I don't mind. None of these barbarians recognize me anyway...") before the noren masked over his soft voice. But that was fine.

Jounouchi went and re-filled the kettle with hot water. He put it on the stove. He stared at the flame as it burned vigorously. He got out a teapot and three cups for measuring. He ran back over in his mind everything that had just happened.

Then he began to dance around the kitchen, unable to think of anything else to properly express his triumph, tripped over a footstool on his second rotation, banged his knee, and finally ended up simply crossing his arms behind his head and lying back, staring up at the lazily turning ceiling fan with an enormous, toothy grin.

Samura's face interrupted his view a few minutes later, expression at once deeply affronted and thoroughly amused. "Enjoying yourself?"

"The water's on," Jounouchi replied helpfully. "He eating yet?"

"He will be once you remember your job and bring out a towel."

Oh. "Oops." Jounouchi rolled up to his feet, still grinning, and went straight to the cabinet heater by the rice cooker, where he retrieved one of the better-rolled towels and laid it out on a wooden stand.

When he turned, however, Samura was still there, arms crossed, frowning at him.

"What?" Jounouchi said defensively, holding the towel up with both hands as a shield. "I only forgot one thing. He's not gonna care."

But though Samura continued to frown for another few seconds, all he eventually said was, "The towel's getting cold," before he turned right back around and walked out.

What the _hell?_ Confused, Jounouchi checked absently on the kettle, unsure of what to think about that little exchange. Had he guessed already? Or was he just crabby because his entrepreneurial feng shui was being messed up? It wasn't like he didn't know that his now-roommate sometimes batted for both teams, though they'd never really talked about it--but it was realistically a lot more likely that he was just trying to keep Jounouchi from shaming him indirectly by making an ass out of himself.

Jounouchi had to admit, this was a legitimate worry.

-

When he at last reemerged from the kitchen with the towel, the first thing he saw, oddly enough, was Samura right in the middle of offering an uncapped pen to Kaiba.

"--a great honor," he was saying humbly. "Thank you, Kaiba-san."

Kaiba nodded an acknowledgement to this, receiving the pen with one hand. Then, moving with practiced, graceful ease, he pinned down to the bar the paper menu Jounouchi had just given him a few minutes earlier, and autographed it with what was admittedly an extremely elegant signature.

And in that instant, Jounouchi knew _exactly_ why Kaiba had been interested in him last night.

Samura had known the guy for all of ten minutes, and he'd already asked him for proof--essentially--of his being there, something he could display to other people in the future. Jounouchi, on the other hand, had been complaining about what crappy weather they were having within his first ten minutes of acquaintance with the icon, not shoving a napkin in his face and asking him to write his name on it.

Absently it occurred to him that this probably would have been a very smart move financially, but he was grateful otherwise that it had never even dawned on him to treat the businessman any better or worse than he treated anybody else. Jounouchi just didn't do deferential as a matter of course.

_You don't care who I am, do you? I mean you're not intimidated by me._

Suddenly it all made a lot more sense.

Unsure of what exactly to say or do to not ruin this for Samura (after all, he wasn't doing anything _wrong_), Jounouchi waited silently until Kaiba had returned the pen and menu before making his way over to deliver the towel. "Here you go, man."

Samura's hand almost got him again, but Jounouchi had the foresight to duck this time. "Manners! Why can't you ever at least pretend you've got some culture, Jounouchi?"

"Oh my _god_. Maybe 'cause I've got no filters!" Jounouchi replied with equal intensity, a lot of which got ruined when he failed to make himself stop grinning, jogging around to Kaiba's other side to get out of range. "It just occurred to me, boss! Why didn't I ever _notice?_ All these years wasted when I could've been just like everybody else!"

Kaiba, meanwhile, was wiping down each of his fingers methodically with the towel, the strange half-smile twisting at his mouth again. "You could try thinking before speaking," he suggested quietly.

Jounouchi stared at him for a second, startled. Then he began to laugh loudly. "Yeah, that'd do it. Guess your day went better this time if you're making jokes, huh?"

"Or something," Kaiba said even more quietly, and re-rolled his towel, laying it back in its stand.

Grinning, Jounouchi moved back around him, heading for the kitchen. "Water should be about ready. I'll bring the tea out in a minute or two."

The water was in fact just beginning to boil when he got there, the top of the kettle rattling softly. Pulling it off the burner, Jounouchi, whistling, filled the waiting pot most of the way, then returned the kettle to its burner and poured the water from the pot into the cups, letting it cool while he got the leaves. Emptying the extra water out of the pot, he dumped in a few tablespoons of sencha, measuring by eye, then emptied the cups back into the pot and selected one at random for serving.

This had been one of Jounouchi's least favorite parts of his job at first, as it not only involved a bunch of steps, but relied almost exclusively on experience to turn out well. He'd gotten good at it pretty fast, however, which had recently begun to make the task somewhat less ponderous, and even pleasant on cold days like this one.

Finished with the stove now, Jounouchi turned it off, picked up the steeping pot in one hand, the cup in the other, and, still whistling, made his way back out.

Samura had been making small talk in his absence, something statistics-related that Jounouchi instantly tuned out. He busied himself instead with pouring the tea, swishing the pot around carefully just before he did to stir up the good stuff from the bottom.

"Thank you," Kaiba said politely, and discreetly chose not to comment on how Jounouchi had set the cup down with the pattern facing the left wall of the bar, where nobody could see it.

Damnit.

-

"So how'd you find me, anyway?" Jounouchi asked a little while later, leaning against the spotless counter and watching Kaiba work his way through a plate of nigirizushi. Samura, having caught on pretty quickly to the fact that the businessman wanted to talk to Jounouchi privately, had excused himself a few minutes earlier on the pretext of taking the new menu over to his printer for a test run.

Then again, he actually had mentioned right before they'd opened that he was planning on doing that, so maybe he really was just trying to get it finished before the midday break ended. Whatever.

Meticulously Kaiba pushed one piece of sushi a fraction of an inch across his plate, lining it up perfectly with its mate, eyes lowered to the task. "Do you think you're difficult to find?"

Jounouchi shrugged, meandering over to the other side of the bar to reclaim his former seat, tired of standing. "I know Tom didn't tell you."

Kaiba narrowed his eyes faintly. "He was extremely loud."

"Who, Tom?"

Picking up the piece he'd just rearranged, Kaiba nodded fractionally.

Jounouchi shrugged again, spinning in a slow circle. "Yeah, well. So was I for a long time. His spirit's good. What, did he think you tried to lift my wallet or something while I was out?"

Kaiba's eyes narrowed even more. "Yes, as a matter of fact. He wanted me to turn out my pockets."

Okay, that was _hysterical_. Jounouchi barked out a sharp laugh, shaking his head. "Well, welcome to America. You wanna know the crime rate around here?"

"Approximately 13,000 for the entirety of last year," Kaiba said immediately, "with arson and larceny included."

...wow. Jounouchi blinked, at something of a loss. "Um. Right." _And for a while you were one of this year's, blondie. Good job with that_. "And, uh--you know that's actually pretty low for this country? I mean, I used to think Kobe was hot stuff before I came over, but it's got _nothing_ on New York."

Kaiba finally looked up from his plate at this, apparently curious. "Kobe?"

Settling one elbow on the bar, Jounouchi slouched over partway, head cradled in his hand. "Moved there after Domino. You know what they say: if you can't visit Paris--"

"--visit Kobe," Kaiba finished, nodding. "I'm not surprised."

A moment of silence passed. Outside a cloud break moved overhead, the sun emerging in a thin yellow wash which lit up the dark interior of the empty room, shining off the polished bar top.

"I came primarily to apologize," Kaiba said abruptly, eyes fixed on his plate once more. This time, however, he wasn't even pretending to be interested in the food, his chopstick-bearing hand immobile on the bar. "If I offended you last night. It wasn't my intention."

Somehow this made much more sense than the thought of him checking up on the severity of a relative stranger's hangover. Jounouchi found himself shrugging yet again, mouth pinched up in consternation. "Don't apologize. It takes a hell of a lot more than that to bother me." Then, more a muttered comment than a fresh point: "I mean, I said yes, didn't I?"

Kaiba turned slowly to peer down at him, expressionless.

"Yes," he murmured after a moment. "You did."

Jounouchi's stomach twisted around on itself, as did his brain when he tried to force it to put together a tactful way of saying what he knew he was going to have to bring up next. The cloud break slid past, the bar darkening once more around them.

"Look," he managed eventually, turning his eyes away across the bar, staring at the kitchen door with its kitschy Great Wave of Kanagawa noren. "About that. I've been thinking, and I--I dunno, I think maybe that's better left under the rug."

For a long, painful moment Kaiba said nothing, and was in fact totally still in his peripheral vision. Then, voice toneless, he murmured, "Quite understandable. I apologize again."

Shit. "No, no," Jounouchi sighed, turning his head back in Kaiba's direction, scowling lightly in frustration. "Listen. How long are you here for?"

"Four days from tomorrow," Kaiba said, and ate the second to last nigirizushi on his plate without looking at it.

Jounouchi nodded, trying to will his stomach to stop dancing around like Obon had come early. This line of thought had only occurred to him in the last twenty minutes, his initial excitement at Kaiba's arrival notwithstanding, but he knew now that it was the more important thing to talk about, what he personally wanted aside. "That's kinda what I figured. I said last night I was good at doing stupid stuff, right? And you know what? The more I imagine it, the more I doubt this would be stupid at all."

That got a frown out of Kaiba, who swallowed quickly, clearing his mouth to speak. "_What?_"

"Well, come on, man," Jounouchi prompted, frowning back. "You're the one who was first bringing up the I-dunno-why-I'm-asking-but-I'm-asking thing. It's pretty mutual."

It appeared that this was a pleasing thought to the businessman; his face at least began to warm marginally, some of the tightness dissipating from around his eyes.

But that wasn't what he was trying to do, damnit. "Anyway," Jounouchi said quickly, willing himself not to blush. Kaiba really was unfairly good-looking. Goddamnit. Why did he have to be the sensible one here? "So that got me thinking, what happens if it's awesome? Like, say we even skip over the rushed stuff and actually do a date or something, and that turns out perfect. What happens next?"

Jounouchi let that sit in the air for a long moment, watching as Kaiba thought about it. As finally, softly, he said, "I get on a plane and go home."

"-Bingo,-" Jounouchi replied, equally soft. "And I stay here and wash dishes forever. Sounds kind of sad, right?"

Kaiba's mouth twitched, the smile all bitterness when it came through this time. "I never imagined you were so practical."

"It took a lotta practice," Jounouchi admitted, feeling his neck and ears beginning to cool down at last. "Are you getting my point here?"

Wordlessly Kaiba nodded, breathing out a quiet sigh through his nose.

Suddenly exhausted, Jounouchi echoed the sigh, turning to stare at the bar again. For lack of anything better to do he picked up the still-warm teapot, topping off Kaiba's cup. Then he got up, went silently into the kitchen, grabbed one of the leftover teacups for himself, and went right back to the bar, taking the same seat for the third time.

Kaiba's hand extended into his peripheral vision, collecting the pot; Jounouchi held out his cup obligingly, and watched as he filled it with the last of the tea.

"Well," Kaiba said at last, speaking while Jounouchi sipped. "Thank you for the consideration. It was comforting." And quietly, almost as though he hoped by lowering his voice Jounouchi would play along and pretend he hadn't heard: "I do wish you hadn't passed out."

Jounouchi grinned at that, setting his teacup down so he could rest his forehead on his hands. "Yeah, me too. Logic's a real bitch, isn't it?"

"-Yes,-" Kaiba agreed, switching abruptly to English. "-I believe the slang is a buzz kill.-"

Jounouchi blinked, rolling his head to the side so that his cheek was pillowed on his hands instead. "You speak English."

The brunet actually smirked at that, the expression surprisingly natural on his face. "-Better than you.-"

"You asshole," Jounouchi snickered, shaking his head. "You picked me out by my fucking accent last night, didn't you?"

Kaiba's smirk widened. "-You might say it was a combination of factors.-"

Oh, well. Grinning, he checked on Kaiba's plate and found it empty; apparently he'd eaten the last piece while Jounouchi was in the kitchen. "Well, there you go. One plate of Samura's best down the hatch. Lemme throw that in the sink."

Kaiba frowned, setting his chopsticks carefully on the rest. "Finish your tea first. It'll go completely cold if you don't."

Even Jounouchi could see through that. "You think I'm tryin' to give you a chance to get out without me here? Tough luck, man. Or did you just wanna kiss me goodbye first?" He waggled his eyebrows teasingly, shifting his head into the crook of one of his elbows. "Awful American of you."

"French," Kaiba murmured.

"Huh?"

Kaiba pressed his lips together briefly. "That's the French. Americans are more likely to hug one another than they are to kiss."

"No way," Jounouchi protested, disbelieving. They kissed all the time. "I see it everywhere."

"Probably between married and younger couples, but not as a casual greeting. Think about it."

Jounouchi thought about it. He tried to remember if he'd ever seen anyone of the same sex kiss just to say hello or goodbye, or any kids, or even most adults, and realized--holy shit, Kaiba was _right_. "That's _nuts_. You know, they usually stick to just the cheek, too? I only ever saw a few guys who--"

There was no way Kaiba would have been able to lean over across a whole seat and kiss him comfortably had he not been so freakishly tall, but he was, and he did. It came to Jounouchi's mind that this was probably not a normal thought to have about one's first kiss with a billionaire, and yet for a trembling, thin, frozen moment that was just all there was; wonder that such an unnerving trait could be put to such use, and that he was learning about that use _right this second_.

Then it occurred to him that he should probably, like, _do_ something. Like kiss back, or punch him in the solar plexus, or bite his tongue for not asking.

After a moment of listening to both of them breathe, Jounouchi picked door number one, and tilted his head a little. What the hell, right? Even he could recognize a moment in the making.

All things considered, it was probably the most peaceful kiss of his life, the angle perfectly measured after his slight adjustment; no awkward nose bumping or tooth-scraping, just soft breath and a little hint of tongue. Nothing dirty, just...nice.

Kaiba drew back after a moment, and would have looked deceptively composed had his ears not been faintly, traitorously red. Jounouchi licked his lips critically, staring up at him.

"Eel," he declared at last, smacking a little.

The observation scared up a faint, almost pleasant smile from Kaiba, whose ears were returning to their normal color. "I always save it for last."

He got off his stool then, turning toward the bar's front windows. Jounouchi looked with him, and only realized that he'd actually been hearing rain for several minutes when he saw water beading down the glass.

"Damnit," he said, taking a deep breath to still his heart as it finally began to sink in that _holy shit_, he'd just kissed Kaiba Seto. Been kissed by Kaiba Seto. Whatever. "You're gonna get soaked."

Kaiba shook his head, reaching for something which had been leaning against the bar beside his leg, out of Jounouchi's sight. An umbrella, of course; one of the all-black, classic models, not the cheap fold-up kind that came with new jackets and purses. "I read in the paper that it might."

Jounouchi kicked one heel against the bar, grinning lopsidedly. "Always prepared, huh?"

"Not always," Kaiba murmured, moving toward the door. "I'm late."

"Shit." Jounouchi sat up at last, grin fading. "Sorry."

Kaiba propped the door open with a shoulder, peering out, hands busy undoing the umbrella strap. "I'm not. This was important to resolve."

Here, however, the businessman hesitated for a long, strangely timeless moment, half his body trapped in the cold, framed in profile by the weak grey light.

"I suppose," he murmured at last, almost too low to hear, "that I shouldn't be surprised. That I would be attracted to someone as cowardly as myself."

And with that he left, stepping out and swinging the umbrella up and open in one neat motion to shield his head from the drizzle. Jounouchi stared after him, mouth open.

"Oh my god," he said to the empty tables half a minute later, wide-eyed. "That asshole just called me a coward."


	3. Chapter 3

"_Samura_," Jounouchi growled forcefully, and barely managed to slow his hand down before he could throw the teapot into the others. "I don't. Want. To talk about it. _Okay?_ Is that okay?"

"_No_," Samura growled back, slapping a stack of the freshly printed menus into his now-free hand. "Go put those in the holder."

Done on soft yellow paper this time, the new spread was of autumn flowers on a riverbank, confined mostly to the lower left corner--spider chrysanthemum, begonia, a few small hibiscus, and a thumbnail moon up in the right corner, balancing. It wasn't the best sumi-e Jounouchi had ever seen, but neither was it even close to the worst. "Samura, why don't you just do this for a living?"

"Because it is sushi I breathe for," Samura explained tartly, following him into the bar proper. "And flattery won't get you _anywhere_, Jou. What did you say to Kaiba-san that made him leave so quickly?"

Jounouchi groaned, pulling the old menus out of the holder and refilling it with the new ones. "Why won't you believe that he just had work to do?"

"Because I've been working with you for more than a year," Samura replied shortly, beginning to rearrange his knives on the counter, "and I've never met anyone else who's quite so good at sticking his foot into his mouth. I wasn't even gone an hour!"

"Forty minutes," Jounouchi said, going back into the kitchen to collect Kaiba's dishes from the drying rack, raising his voice to shout through the noren. "Forty minutes, Samura! He spent twenty minutes eating, left, and twenty minutes later you showed up! That's it! That's _all!_"

"Then what are you so mad about?" Samura shouted back.

"I'm mad that nobody will leave me the hell _alone!_" Jounouchi slammed a cup down onto the stack as he yelled this, frustrated. His head was pounding again, a steady ache spread between his temples. "Goddamnit, why does it always have to be _my_ fault? Isn't it possible that I was the one being logical? I mean, I know I'm stupid, but don't I ever get to work on improving that? Excuse me for not wanting to be the guy who spends his whole life _fucking everything up!_"

Jounouchi lost his grip on the last dish with this, heard it shatter on the stones long before he could even watch it fall, let alone make a grab for it.

The sushi plate, of course--Kaiba's plate. Jounouchi buried his hands in his hair, staring miserably down at the ruined maple leaf pattern spread across the pieces. "Shit."

He could only stand immobile for so long, however, and after a few seconds knelt silently to clean it up. Samura's head appeared through the noren as he moved, peering, assessing the situation. Then the older man came in and knelt as well, helping.

"Sorry," Jounouchi muttered, unable to look at him. "Take it outta my pay."

Samura was shaking his head. "I should have made you take the day off. Go up and get some more sleep, Jounouchi."

This was very nearly the last thing Jounouchi wanted to hear. "I can work," he protested, collecting the last of the big pieces.

Samura held out his hands expectantly, silent, until Jounouchi finally dropped what he had picked up into them, the pieces clinking gently against what Samura had collected himself. "Get the broom."

Jounouchi got the broom.

Samura, the pieces already thrown away, collected it from him, and began to sweep the smaller fragments carefully up. "I'm not angry," he said over the dry sound of the bristles as they passed across the stone. "I've been meaning to replace this pattern anyway. But I think you need a little more time than you're going to admit on your own."

"Samura--" Jounouchi began, watching him unhappily; but there was no way to finish that sentence. Obviously he was right. He hadn't broken anything since his first week of work, and hadn't gotten mad like that...well, _ever_. He just didn't make a habit of getting so worked up about things anymore. "I'm really sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Samura snorted, handing the broom back. "Just get yourself sorted out. It's not far past four now; I'll call Chio-chan and have her send one of her sons over to fill in. Those damn kids never do anything useful on their own."

"Right," Jounouchi said quietly. He finished replacing the broom, and reached up to pull the ladder down from the ceiling.

"Jounouchi."

Jounouchi paused, hands on the bottom step. Samura hesitated for a few seconds.

"Make certain you get some dinner," he said at last, and was halfway through the noren before he turned back to add, "And don't get stupid about it. I've broken dozens of dishes in my time."

Jounouchi was tempted to remind him that it wasn't really the dish that was the problem, but managed not to. No point in stating the obvious.

-

As far as adult time-outs went, this one almost--but not quite--took the cake for most frustrating.

The real bitch was not being able to get out of the bar. Strictly speaking, he was in no way confined to the upper room, but his conscience wouldn't allow him to wander around just for the hell of it; he'd get in the way of Chio's kid, whichever one it was this week, and going out past Samura definitely wasn't an option (of course he could get out through the back door in the kitchen if he really needed; he just wasn't that desperate yet). Eventually he'd have to emerge for dinner, but that was still a long way off, and would be on Samura's terms when it happened. He found himself missing his apartment more now than he ever had in prison.

So Jounouchi brooded. On the futon he'd never put away, on the floor sitting seiza, by the window lounging like a regular bum; Jounouchi sat and considered, and when that got too painful he sat and thought of nothing, until his concentration could solidify again. He thought endlessly of what it was to be a coward, where the line between caution and fear could realistically be drawn. For several years now he had been trying harder and harder to avoid complications. He found that the older he got, the more he liked simple things, and couldn't see anything wrong with that.

Except sometimes he still remembered the thrill of risking his life pointlessly, remembered what it had felt like to be recognized for his bravery; and then he would realize that he couldn't remember anymore what it had been like to live fearlessly. Not that he had been without worry as a teenager or even a young man; in his experience there were _always_ things to worry about. He just couldn't recall how it was that he'd ever put them out of his mind.

Kaiba had called him a coward.

Kaiba had called him a coward, and the more Jounouchi thought about it, the more he believed--once the instinctual, violent denial had passed--that he was probably right.

Jounouchi tried to remember when this had happened.

It was nearly eight thirty before he decided, sitting by the window again and flipping restlessly through one of Samura's old Shounen Jumps, that it must have happened just after he turned twenty-three; and if not that early February, then eight years before it, with the first fire, and his extremely public, court-documented break with Hirutani. It was a toss-up between the two, really.

Jounouchi closed the Shounen Jump, frowning.

It wasn't like the dates weren't memorable, or that he didn't think of them often. He had simply never considered the possibility that they might ultimately lead him to become the kind of person he couldn't have any respect for--if that was what was actually happening here. If he wasn't just getting played for a sissy moron.

This, however, was in and of itself another dilemma. Was it a sissy, moronic thing to avoid starting what was categorically a doomed relationship for no reason other than a bizarre gut feeling that it might be one of the best things he'd ever do in his life? Or was it actually just prudent, a final confirmation that he had at last gotten over being a kid for good?

Jounouchi wondered what he would have done differently ten years ago, and within seconds knew with perfect clarity: he would never have said no at any point, would have tried, consequences be damned, and if it had gone badly, oh well. If it hadn't, he would have smuggled himself onto a plane and followed Kaiba all the way back to Japan.

Jounouchi couldn't decide which was stupider: chasing someone around the world with only the skeleton of a hope for company, or not even having the balls to try.

-

"Jounouchi."

Samura was shaking his shoulder through the quilt, strong fingers clamped tight. Jounouchi felt his eyes snap open, urged on by a strange, instant wakefulness that only happened to him rarely. No disorientation, no gummy eyes; just sudden consciousness, and an awareness of the passage of time.

"What time is it?"

"Nine thirty," Samura said, letting go of him and standing up. The room was dark, but lit in blue spots by the top of a neon sign visible over one of the buildings out back. "Come get some food."

"I'm not hungry," said Jounouchi, truthfully, and sat up, frowning at his knees. "You're good with words, right?"

Samura knelt, watching him silently, and didn't respond.

Yes, then. Jounouchi rubbed one hand across the back of his neck, considering. "What's a coward?"

"A creature that shows ignoble fear in the face of crisis, pain, difficulty, or revelation," replied Samura instantly, as though he'd been waiting all day to say it.

Jounouchi turned the frown on him, perplexed. "Revelation?"

"You asked me," Samura shrugged, now standing and moving toward the ladder, "not a dictionary. I think men run from anything, good or bad, that presents itself as challenging. Those men are cowards. I'll keep some noodles downstairs in the refrigerator for you. Stock's in the pot on the stove."

"Oh," Jounouchi murmured, watching the top of his head disappear. "Thanks."

He wasn't entirely sure that had helped.

-

At ten Jounouchi took another shower, put the same jeans back on, and found a fresh sweater in his bag of clothes to finish it off; orange with brown stripes, which he figured fit the season pretty well. Samura took one look at it when he made his way back up into the attic room and snorted loudly, but Jounouchi merely graced this with a peace sign and found a fresh volume of Shounen Jump, flipping through it for the One Piece chapters.

Around ten thirty Jounouchi finished the chapters and went to rest on his futon, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Samura was doing something that looked distressingly financial, sitting at the kotatsu and stabbing methodically at a calculator, small glasses perched on the end of his nose.

It was nearly eleven o'clock before Jounouchi finally stood up, took one look at Samura (who had finished with the calculator and put the kotatsu away, busy now laying out his futon for the night), and announced loudly, "I gotta go. Probably won't get back until about nine tomorrow, so keep your shirt on. You can fire me if I'm late."

Then Jounouchi did exactly that, jogging over to the ladder and climbing down without another word. Maybe Samura said something to stop him, or maybe he just sat there watching--either way, Jounouchi wasn't paying attention. In the kitchen he grabbed his coat off the hook by the back door, pulled on his sneakers, and took off, careful to lock up again as he left.

All down Couch Street he swore at himself, volubly and with tremendous conviction. He swore going past the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, where fake cobwebs had been stretched between the guitars, and as he turned down the block by the Vegetarian House, and as he went under the Chinatown gate onto Burnside. He took a break from swearing as he crossed over the bridge, needing both the breath and the time to come up with a fresh selection of descriptors. Then he started up again on Grand Avenue, and threw himself into the work in earnest once that finally branched into Lloyd Boulevard.

Finally he arrived at Ninth Avenue, with the top of the DoubleTree just barely visible over the nearby buildings, and couldn't decide whether it would be smarter to turn here or continue on to Eleventh, having absolutely no clue which side the damn entrance was on. Obviously he had to stop swearing while he worked this out.

In the end he chose to continue on, partially because it would let him get a look at the park before he got down to the nitty gritty of fucking his life up one more time, and partially just for the hell of it.

Fortunately for him, the lobby wasn't hard to find. He'd picked the right side of the building by sheer dumb luck, and was able to cut across the front loading zone without interruption, going through the polished doors and between the bellhops and staring in unadulterated awe around the lobby--which was, in turned out, not so much a hotel lobby as an airport lobby in design. He could even see a fucking restaurant in the distance, and a floor plan on one wall, like people had actually gotten lost before.

And there, close to the front desk, was the elevator. Jounouchi made for it instantly, relieved that he hadn't had to waste time searching between public bathrooms and eight thousand coffee shops to find it.

Getting by the front desk, however, turned out to be a little more difficult than he had anticipated.

"-Welcome back, sir,-" the clerk chirped as soon as he drew near, obviously mistaking him for someone else (for example, someone who was actually staying there). Something in a napkin was promptly offered. "-Would you like your warm cookie?-"

Jounouchi stopped walking, agog.

"-Ano. No?-" God, why didn't any of the places _he'd_ ever stayed ask that? He could smell it now, too; sugar and soft chocolate and butter.

The clerk blinked openly, put off by either his tone or his accent, or possibly both. Recognizing this only now as a prime opportunity to prevent himself from having to run around all fourteen floors like an idiot trying to match the room number, Jounouchi grinned apologetically and made his way toward her.

"-Sorry, I--_I'm_ not staying here. Is a friend I'm visit. Ing. Ano.-" He fished out the note at this point, barely managing to keep his prison dispatch from opening up at the same time. Because that would have been _really_ helpful. "-This is eleventh floor, right?-"

She took a cautious look at the note, then finally relaxed a little, apparently coming to the decision with this bit of evidence that he wasn't actually crazy. "-Yes, sir. It's an executive suite. I believe you'll find it right at the end of the hall. Would you like me to call in advance and let your host know you've arrived?-"

Of _course_ it was a suite. Because obviously billionaires couldn't be expected to stay in normal rooms like the rest of them. Jounouchi shook his head, setting the sarcasm aside for a moment, and pointed one finger at his nose expressively, grinning. "-No, no. I'm surprise. Thanks!-"

Jounouchi then set off toward the elevator, got halfway there, and turned right back around, too curious to let it go. "-You really give those cookie to everyone staying?-"

The clerk began to smile, staring at him in something bordering on amused disbelief. Jounouchi noticed a tiny pumpkin with a silly, painted face sitting next to the bell by her hand, staring at him. "-Yes, we do.-"

Jounouchi considered this for a moment, trying not to stare back at the pumpkin. "-Good policy.-"

The woman's smile got a little wider. "-We have a lot of them, you know.-"

-

So it was that Jounouchi got onto the elevator with a cookie of his own, which he was able to enjoy between floors one and eleven uninterrupted. He was licking his fingers by the time the doors slid open, completely silent.

The hall was lit to a degree that stopped just short of being physically painful, and thickly carpeted, so much so that his feet made practically no sound as he searched for suite 03.

As it turned out, the clerk had been wrong; there were five suites in this section of the hall, putting 03 on the left side, right between 01 (next to the elevator) and 05 (which Jounouchi suspected was the one she'd actually been thinking of). All the doors were pale wood, with elegant brass numbers differentiating them.

He stood in front of 03 for almost a minute before he could force himself to take a deep, bracing breath, and lift one fist. This was almost immediately returned to his side, but--Jounouchi _knew_, knew with an uncanny, internal clarity, that there was no other way to understand what he had become than through this single action. This would decide it all.

He began to pound on the door with sharp, measured force.

It opened on the fifth blow, and for one long, long second Jounouchi was positive that it was going to be someone else; the wrong person, or some other guy Kaiba had picked up after his refusal.

But it was just Kaiba, scowling, hair damp from a recent shower. In his right hand was a thick book, his trigger finger sandwiched inside, marking a page.

"Jounouchi," he said, unfriendly expression melting into open surprise. His arms were bare, and his feet as well, the fancy clothes of the last two days discarded for a simple blue tank top and black pajama bottoms. Looked like he'd been about to go to sleep.

Well, it _was_ nearly midnight. "God," Jounouchi breathed, grinning, and rolled his eyes. He was relieved on so many levels, and scared, and suddenly, completely alive with energy. "You know, for a second there I totally thought you were gonna be someone else?"

He stepped inside then, before Kaiba could respond, and shut the heavy door after himself, toeing his sneakers off.

"Jounouchi," Kaiba said again, frowning, and, turning to face him, locked the door with his free hand (to all appearances out of sheer habit--he wasn't even looking when he did it). "What are you--?"

"Hang on," Jounouchi interrupted, holding one hand up.

Kaiba held on.

Perfect. Smiling, Jounouchi grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him down to a normal height, waited the split second it took for him to open his mouth in protest, then kissed him.

The word for this one was definitely not peaceful.

From a thousand miles away he heard Kaiba's book hitting the floor, right before two very large, very warm hands closed around his wrists, pulling them away and down, forcing him back until he ran into the door. It hurt--one of his shoulders was definitely not coming out of this unbruised--but that wasn't a big deal. That didn't matter at all. Kaiba pulled away and pushed immediately back, pressing his mouth farther open, warm and overwhelming, tongue sliding against his lower lip, his teeth, his own tongue.

Sucking in a deep breath through his nose, Jounouchi opened his eyes briefly, and _god_, Kaiba was tall. There was a light on somewhere overhead, but he could barely tell, most of it blocked out by the businessman's body. Jounouchi twisted gently where he stood, trying to get his jacket off, but it got stuck at his wrists, bunched around Kaiba's hands.

Finally things began to calm down a bit, Kaiba drawing away, at first only a fraction, then another, then at last straightening completely to stare down at him, eyes slightly less than half-open. His breathing was shallow, but quiet.

Jounouchi blinked slowly, staring back. He could feel his back expanding against the door every time he took a breath, and his bottom lip swelling a little, the sting of something bitten.

Then Kaiba was smirking; only the barest hint of an expression. "Did you actually steal a cookie from the desk?"

...okay, that was just _unfair_. "_No_," Jounouchi panted, frowning. He began to rotate his hands pointedly. "The clerk offered. You really think I'd do that?"

"I don't know." Kaiba held on tighter, stilling him. "Would you?"

Jounouchi began to grin in spite of himself, trying to take off his socks with just his feet and failing spectacularly. "Depends on how hungry I am. Are we gonna do this with my coat on or what?"

Kaiba stilled abruptly, the smirk fading.

"The question, I think," he murmured seriously, "is _are we going to do this at all_." And speaking in a softer voice, as though just coming out of his own haze, "What are you doing here?"

"Proving something," Jounouchi replied, just as quiet, scalp prickling.

Kaiba swallowed. Jounouchi could actually see his Adam's apple bob with the motion, up and down. "You should leave."

Oh, nice try. Jounouchi pressed his back to the door harder, digging his feet in. "Throw me out, then."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I deal in electronics, not morals." Kaiba's tone was sharp, almost angry. "I don't make a business of saving people from their own bad decisions. I just point them out. Hadn't you considered that what I said earlier--that I was manipulating you?"

Jounouchi swallowed, but forced himself to nod. It had been one of his primary doubts. "Sure." And then, turning the trick back around on its maker: "Were you?"

Kaiba went utterly silent, still.

Two seconds passed, then three, and finally, fractionally, he shook his head. "No. I wanted to. I thought I was, but it was just the truth. I am a coward."

"I'm not," said Jounouchi, low but firm. "Can I take my coat off now?"

Kaiba hesitated, blinked. Then he let go of his wrists.

The coat dropped to the floor, half on top of one of his shoes. Jounouchi reached down and pulled his socks off, then leaned around Kaiba to take a look at the room proper, curious.

The walls were a uniform, tasteful beige, unremarkable. From his vantage point he could see a table with six chairs, a bowl of fruit and a bottle of aspirin, a chaise by an enormous double set of windows, each with straight, sheer drapes, a couch and coffee table set, a miniature refrigerator, and a large television in an entertainment center. A door in one set of windows led out to a little balcony, while two others in the walls hinted at the locations of bathroom and bedroom. All the upholstery was shockingly pale, like the walls, but the molding and wood frames were black, fashionably stark.

"Damn," he said, laughing at it all. Was that actually a decorative sword in the middle of the coffee table? And in the trash can next to the entertainment center--oh, more Halloween decorations. Of course. Looked like Kaiba wasn't a holiday person, either. "You know, I've never seen a suite before. What d'you do with two whole rooms?"

"Remarkably little," said Kaiba. "When there's sunlight I read by the window. When there isn't I read by the lamp."

"Not a TV guy," Jounouchi stated experimentally, smiling.

"Not even when I was on it," Kaiba replied, unsmiling.

Jounouchi tried not to let the tone of this comment drag down the gradually returning mood, but it was difficult. "So will we kill ourselves trying to get to the bed if I turn the light off?"

Kaiba frowned. "Doubtfully. The windows let in a considerable amount of ambient light."

"Cool." Jounouchi double checked that all the drapes were open, which they were, and clicked his teeth together a few times, considering the merits of both scenarios. Then he groped one hand along the wall until he found the switch, flipped it, and watched the room fall into total, if fleeting darkness.

Kaiba was back on him in seconds, as though cued by the change. Hands pushed up his shirt, a mouth recapturing his and kissing relentlessly until Jounouchi, head spinning, allowed his lips to part, deepening it. Damp bangs brushed against his forehead, shockingly cool after so much heat. His shirt was being hiked up his torso, two pinkies dragging agonizingly up his sides.

Holy _shit_. Jounouchi turned his face away quickly, and wasn't surprised when Kaiba used the opportunity to pull the sweater up higher, trying to get it off. "Okay--ah--" Rough cloth scraped past his nose and mouth, and Jounouchi, as much out of self-defense as desire, lifted his arms, letting it slide over his head smoothly. "_Kaiba_."

Kaiba's hands were mapping down his body, touching--it seemed--every inch of exposed skin. "Yes?"

Jounouchi swallowed thickly, growing more aware with every second of his body, every inch of it, from the prickling of skin along his legs to the small gathering of sweat in his lower back to the tell-tale swell that would soon be an erection. "I dunno which way I'm going."

One of Kaiba's hands dropped to his wrist again, gentler now. He began to walk, half turned away. Jounouchi followed carefully, his eyes adjusting. Kaiba was no more than a defined shadow towering over him, diffused blue and red and green and white from the advertisements mottling his skin, reflecting off his eyes. For a second he appeared to be made of light, and for another to be physically painted.

They reached the door in the far wall (his second guess--good that he'd asked, then), and Jounouchi, glancing through as Kaiba opened it, saw an immaculately made king bed with pale sheets and approximately three hundred pillows clustered at the top. Pleased to have his bearings, Jounouchi shook his hand free and went immediately to the window on the left side of the room, peering out to assess the view.

It was, in a word, spectacular, provided one went for the whole glory-of-the-urban-sprawl thing. Jounouchi did, and felt his chest tighten up just a little, a grin tugging at his mouth.

Even as a little kid he'd liked tall buildings. Spending so much of his life living like an ant in alleys, moving through a specific range of streets, it was a pleasure--a wonder--to get an opportunity to look down like this; like a bird, or a god. Like things would start to make an enlightened kind of sense if only he could get enough distance to look at everything together. It wasn't a feeling that he'd ever really been able to put into words, but it was persistent. A reliable wonder.

Kaiba stepped up behind him. He didn't go quite so far as to press their bodies together, but one of his hands did lift to wrap around Jounouchi's bent elbow, following the line of his arm down to his hand where it pressed against the glass. Then his head dipped, lips touching his back softly at the join between his neck and shoulder, where the muscle curved most obviously.

Sighing quietly, Jounouchi turned--and caught his own face staring at him around Kaiba's shoulder, pale and smiling faintly. His arms broke out instantly in goose bumps, every cell in his skin tingling.

Frowning, Kaiba turned to look as well, leaving his hand wrapped around Jounouchi's. "The closet?"

"It's a mirror," Jounouchi said, half a statement of the obvious and half an attempt to calm himself, watching the mouth of his reflection move in time with the words. "Shit. Scared me for a second."

"You must believe in doppelgängers, then," Kaiba murmured, turning back toward him. Jounouchi met the stare, but in his peripheral vision he could still see Kaiba's back in the mirror, long and smooth, the blue tank top bellowing ever-so-slightly in and out with his sides as he breathed, a second skin.

"No," said Jounouchi, frowning. "Just ghosts. And I hate those damn closets."

"They're efficient," Kaiba replied reasonably, turning him until his back faced the window. "And they make the room look bigger."

Jounouchi almost said they made it look like a cheap brothel, too, but managed to stop himself at the last second. Talk about mood killers. "They freak me out."

Kaiba's mouth twitched, his face drawing closer. "Don't look, then," he murmured, and kissed him.

This was excellent advice. Jounouchi closed his eyes pointedly, concentrating on the kiss, and on finally getting his hands on Kaiba in return, breaking away just long enough to pull the thin night top off.

Surprisingly, Kaiba was much stronger than he looked, his arms and back considerably less than what Jounouchi would call yielding beneath his hands. What he had was primarily flat, long muscle, a body toned for endurance more than brute strength. Jounouchi in his day has tried to go for both, but he'd never been able to build up much of a figure in either direction, even when he was brawling daily. At first it had been irritating, people constantly underestimating him, but then he'd figured out how to turn it to his advantage. After that he'd never been ungrateful again.

The glass was cold against his back, Kaiba's hand incongruously hot on his stomach. Jounouchi shifted restlessly, trapped between the two temperatures, then finally pushed forward, urging Kaiba back until his knees hit the bed, and he sat. Grinning, Jounouchi moved immediately to straddle him; and that was good too, the position finally putting him on a comfortable eye-level with the taller man. The kissing got easier, and faster.

And then something horrible occurred to Jounouchi.

He pulled his face away immediately, staring at Kaiba. "_Holy shit_," he said expressively. "Please tell me you have stuff already. Condoms and stuff."

Jounouchi wasn't sure _amused_ was the right word for Kaiba's expression, but it was a close thing. He refused to feel embarrassed either way; this was important shit. For years and years he'd never even thought about it, until he'd met the first guy he ever dated (incidentally the same guy who'd almost put a permanent dent in his head when he started to get stupid with the self-pity), and been forced to sit through two hours of web surfing for pictures of pretty much every horrible disease in existence he could catch from doing that. He'd had nightmares for days, but the lesson stuck.

Fortunately Kaiba nodded, neatly circumventing all the potential problems. Jounouchi couldn't help grinning a little, relieved. "Lube, too?"

Now Kaiba actually did look amused. "Two kinds."

Jounouchi paused in the middle of sliding one hand up his back, face twisting up in incredulity. "They got flavor packs or something?"

"I hadn't done enough research to know whether one brand or the other was superior."

"Oh," said Jounouchi. It was suddenly very difficult not to laugh. "Well. Uh. Guess you can't take any chances with this stuff. Nice call." Then he kissed Kaiba again, closing his eyes.

It was different this time, less experimental. He was getting used to the way Kaiba moved, figuring out what he enjoyed most; for example, that his lips didn't seem to be especially sensitive, but that every time Jounouchi did something to his tongue he made a wonderful, stifled noise.

Breaking his mouth away, Jounouchi slid down to inspect his neck, probing with his nose and tongue. Dropping lower to a sharp collarbone, then a shoulder, he finally paused to pull a hickey into shape, sucking slowly, sliding the thumb of one hand across the base of his spine.

Kaiba grunted softly, one of his own hands lifting to sift through Jounouchi's messy hair, fingertips rubbing carefully at the roots.

Two or three seconds passed before Jounouchi had to break his mouth away from the darkening bruise, laughing, wondering if they were ever going to stop finding ways to interrupt themselves. "What, you thought it was actually bleached?" He lifted his head pointedly, pushing the curve of his skull into Kaiba's palm.

The hand slid down, cupping around his face and neck. "I'll admit I'm surprise."

Jounouchi meant to reply to this, but Kaiba kissed him again, and everything for the next few minutes quite simply dissolved. The next thing he knew for certain, he'd been rolled onto his back, one of Kaiba's hands rubbing between his legs slowly, caressing him through his jeans, and the businessman was murmuring in his ear, "Do you care who tops?"

"Nah," Jounouchi panted, resisting the urge to dig his heels in, to thrust, and added on impulse, "You do it."

Kaiba paused, lifting his face a few inches to blink at him. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Jounouchi said breathlessly, surprised to realize that he really was. He'd only gotten fucked a couple times before, and it had always been fine; but somehow he got the feeling this was going to be better than fine.

Kaiba watched him for another few seconds, his hand still kneading gently. Then he nodded, and propped himself up on one arm, leaning across the bed toward one of the two nightstands, pulling open its drawer.

Unable to resist the temptation, Jounouchi slid one hand down the stomach hovering near his face, down the pelvis, then under the waist band of the pants--and as he'd been hoping, Kaiba wasn't wearing boxers. Excellent. Grinning lopsidedly, Jounouchi palmed him, squeezed, and got a massive, full-body shudder from the businessman for his troubles, as well as a throaty, startled gasp. He began to stroke rhythmically, at once stimulating and assessing; Kaiba was uncircumcised, and (unsurprisingly, given the difference in their heights) somewhat bigger than him.

The drawer of the nightstand shut quickly. Something, or maybe several somethings, or maybe nothing at all, was then dropped on the comforter beside them, and Kaiba was back, kissing him again, working on the button and zipper of his jeans. After a few seconds of this Jounouchi took over for him, pulling his hand away and shimmying carefully free, wishing he'd had the sense not to wear his boxers.

Distantly he was aware of Kaiba mimicking him, and then they were both naked, and kissing, and Jounouchi had the strangest fleeting thought; that women were pleasant and soft and good to lose oneself in, but that he had never felt anything else like this, and that nothing would ever make it tiresome.

It was maybe ten minutes, or maybe twenty, or maybe an hour. Jounouchi had no internal clock, only a slowly growing urgency, and a steady, rising sense of contraction in all his corners. Kaiba was making shapes on his chest with his mouth, one leg between his, and Jounouchi was mindless, pushing into the soft hollow of his hip, savoring the heat of Kaiba's cock near his.

Eventually he got his back more or less braced against the headboard, his thighs around Kaiba's hips, and Kaiba's legs folded beneath him, supporting him. Plastic crinkled and tore, shockingly loud, and a moment passed where Jounouchi simply lay with his eyes closed and stroked himself, listening, waiting.

Then there was another plastic sound, and fingers, and Jounouchi kept stroking himself, kept his eyes closed, kept waiting, until the strangeness passed, and one of Kaiba's hands replaced his, and Kaiba leaned forward--Jounouchi could just imagine his body describing a perfect half-oval--to kiss him, slow and open, as he began to press carefully in.

It was, eventually, better than fine.

-

"So help me out here," Jounouchi said, staring up at the ceiling. "Would you say this is a one night stand, or does that only count for literally one night? I mean, we've known each other for two now."

The lights outside never turned off or changed, the phosphorescent spread of colors continuing to provide exactly the right amount needed for them to see comfortably. Jounouchi lay on his back on top of the covers, staring up at the ceiling and enjoying the coolness of the air as it began to register again. What noises he could hear from outside, from the street so many floors below them, were soft and muffled, TV sounds from a faraway room. Everything was quiet and comfortable, climate-controlled, the inoffensive smell of the sheets and the carpet layered over with the smells of sweat and skin.

Kaiba was beside him, also above the covers, but on his side rather than his back, which was currently facing the eerie, cheap closet. He was thinking very visibly, one warm arm stretched across Jounouchi's stomach, his palm and fingers occasionally moving slowly, stroking.

"I would say," he began finally, carefully, "that it is. A one night stand just means a casual sexual encounter where there exists no immediate expectation of a long-term romantic relationship being formed. There's no time limit that I'm aware of."

Jounouchi listened to the soft other-world traffic, saying nothing, and wondered what exactly he was feeling right now.

Quietly, Kaiba said, "That has to be it, I suppose." He sounded resigned, and slightly frustrated, and slightly bitter, and slightly melancholy.

Jounouchi tipped his head, looking fully out the window. It was raining again, but only a little, more spit than an actual shower. "Guess so."

Kaiba sighed, but his hand didn't leave Jounouchi's side. Abruptly he said, "You won't consider going back to Japan."

The lights vanished as Jounouchi closed his eyes, thinking. He'd known the question would be posed eventually, though if asked, he couldn't have said which of them he'd been expecting it to come from. Now that it was out in the open, he gave himself as much time as he needed, knowing Kaiba would wait, that everything would wait, would wait until it couldn't. He could hear the rain getting louder.

"I don't know you," he said finally, declarative. It felt like it needed to be said. "I get you, but I don't _know_ you, and you really don't know me for shit. Think about it. You ask me to go back--hell, say we put everything on the table and you ask me to go back _with you_, because everything's turning out so weird and easy here: what do I think?"

"That I'm using you," Kaiba said immediately. Ruefully, Jounouchi thought of how he wasn't the only one here who got someone. "That you would go back and have nothing, and even if you only started out asking for small things, you would eventually become dependant on me."

"Right," Jounouchi murmured, digging one of his big toes into the mattress. "I'd be going back _for you_, because _you_ asked. But I don't know you. I only got so much self-respect left, and that would be the end of a lot of it right there. I'd need my own reason. And fuck, even if I said my reason was you, that I had to follow you, what would _you_ think?"

Kaiba's answer was less immediate this time, and considerably more reluctant, unhappy. "I would start out believing you."

"But eventually you'd start to wonder, right?" Jounouchi prompted, letting the room flicker back into his vision, and breathed deeply, turning to stare into Kaiba's strange eyes. "If maybe I did it just 'cause of who I saw on TV when I was a kid. And say I'm right, and the thing you think's so awesome about me right now is how much I don't give a fuck how many parts of the world you own--that'd go away, and I'd be another asshole just like everybody else."

It hurt to say all of it, but Jounouchi made his mouth move, made the words, as awkward as they were, press together into sentences and points. He wasn't a kid. He knew the way things worked.

"It's very cynical," Kaiba said softly, still staring, still rubbing the skin of his palm against his side.

Jounouchi shrugged. "It's realistic. It's the way things fucking go."

"But it could work."

Even after everything that had just been said, Jounouchi couldn't shake the tiny surge of hope which that statement prompted, the resonating belief. He said, "That's right. It could."

"And you aren't a coward."

"But you are." Jounouchi said it softly, trying to take the sting out of the words.

Kaiba stared at him, mouth closed. Then he closed his eyes as well, conceding the point, and didn't say anything else for a long time. The conversation slipped away, and the space it left behind was filled, inexorably, with the rain, quiet and insistent.

Later, ten minutes or half an hour, Kaiba said, "Do you think it's possible for people to truly change?"

"Sure," Jounouchi said lightly, and turned on one of the bedside lamps, then lifted his hands into the light to make shadow puppets on the ceiling. "Look at me. I used to bitch about _everything_. Now I just give people shit sometimes. It's a whole new me, man."

In his peripheral vision he caught Kaiba smiling faintly, apparently amused by this. "The Buddhists say we're always different, that every second of every day we change shape. It makes sense on a biological level; cells are always dividing and rearranging and replenishing. But on a metaphysical level, they argue, the principle holds, that every new thought and every breath creates a new person, slightly different from the person who existed before."

And Kaiba quoted, precisely: "_Insight into change teaches us to embrace our experiences without clinging to them--to get the most out of them in the present moment by fully appreciating their intensity, in full knowledge that we will soon have to let them go to embrace whatever comes next_."

"Well," Jounouchi said, forming a cat, "I never met a Buddhist I didn't like. Sounds good to me."

Kaiba sat up slowly, his arm finally lifting away. One of his knees bent, his two free hands lifting to wrap around his shin, leaning forward to stare into the distance. "But even thinking that, I've only ever become a more concentrated version of the person I started as. I was not an admirable young man. I remain deplorable as a man. In many ways I've only gotten worse."

Jounouchi made a dog's head, made it pant, tongue waggling, ears bobbing. "Maybe you're doing something wrong, then," he suggested, and held his hands closer to the light so that the head on the ceiling got bigger, smiling. "Check it out."

Kaiba looked up, taking in the grey shape. Finally he said, "An Akita."

"No, no," Jounouchi protested, trying to make the muzzle longer. "It's a husky, see?"

"Oh," Kaiba said faintly. He sounded like he was smiling. "Of course. How stupid of me."

"'S okay," Jounouchi shrugged, and dropped his hands. Yawned. "Fuck, I'm tired."

"We should sleep," Kaiba murmured, and without waiting for him to respond reached over and flicked the lamp back off. They began to shift with the same thought in mind, working to get the covers over themselves, and Jounouchi's legs still felt weak when he moved them, trembling faintly. He was also still uncomfortably slippery, slippery between his legs and inside, the feeling so pervasive that he wasn't surprised he hadn't remembered it. The sensation was pretty much impossible to describe, even to himself, and so impossible to hold on to.

There was one awkward moment when they finally worked everything out, a moment where their elbows were touching under the sheets, and they were both wondering whether it would be too strange to sleep dispassionately, without touching one another. Then they shuffled together, tangled up, and the awkwardness dissipated.

Softly Kaiba said into the curve of his shoulder, "I'm here for four more days. I'd like to see you again."

"I wanna have sex with you again," Jounouchi said bluntly, and laughed. He suspected Kaiba wanted to laugh as well, but wasn't willing to risk creating more awkwardness by doing so, or perhaps just wasn't sure where to start. "Sure. Why not? Come by Samura's place again when you can. He'll shit a brick."

"He was quite...effusive."

Jounouchi doubted _effusive_ was the word he'd really wanted to use. "He's something, anyway. But he's a real good boss. Good friend. I make his life a waking hell, keep him on his toes. It works out pretty well."

A moment, and then Kaiba said, sounding amused, "You mock your employer as a matter of course. Your parents didn't pray very hard for your good sense as a boy, did they?"

Jounouchi grinned, eyes tearing up as he fought off the urge to yawn again. "Sure didn't."

And they left it at that, until Jounouchi, needing to say it, murmured, "It's not fair. I had that whole damn speech, and it still feels..."

"Perfect," Kaiba supplied softly. "I know."

Within the next few moments they were both asleep.

-

Once Jounouchi woke up, still more or less in the same position as when he'd first gone under, and stared at himself in the mirror over Kaiba's neck for what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. He looked pale, and satisfied, and scared, and determined.

He went back to sleep.

-

Once Jounouchi woke up, and he had his back turned to Kaiba, and one of Kaiba's hands was pressing above his hips, caressing. The other was wrapped around his cock, fisting it slowly.

Jounouchi groaned, moved his legs restlessly, and felt that he was still slippery. Without opening his eyes he fumbled a hand onto the bedside table, found one of the condoms, handed it back to Kaiba. Both of the hands left him. Plastic ripped, much quieter this time. Then the hand returned, squeezing harder now.

Jounouchi rolled onto his front. Kaiba rolled on top of him, braced his arms and his legs, and sank slowly inside.

It was easier, being relaxed from sleep, being ready from the start. Jounouchi groaned again at the full length of him, and began to thrust into the mattress, into the warm sheet and Kaiba's warm hand, which had followed him as he rolled, which continued to press and slide. Kaiba began to thrust with him, into him, breathing controlled and heavy against the back of his neck, ruffling the ends of his hair.

They both came like that, slowly and with an unexpected intensity, and after a moment rolled back onto their sides. Kaiba pulled out, and Jounouchi rolled over to kiss him, long and thorough, until the moment had passed, and he drew away again to sleep.

He slipped back under as Kaiba was throwing the condom away, listening to the soft rustle of the sheets as he moved and the less-soft patter of the rain on the glass beside them. He wondered if there would be a flood, and then he didn't wonder anything.


End file.
